Abuna Yesehaq (Ge'ez: አቡነ ይስሐቕ; born Laike Maryam Mandefro; 1933 - 29 December 2005), was a leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Western hemisphere.
In 1970, he was sent to Jamaica where he began to minister specifically to the Rastafari community, at the official invitation of Rasta elders including Joseph Hibbert, who was in turn named as a "Spiritual Organizer" by Mandefro.
Only after the Marxist Derg Revolution that toppled Haile Selassie and appointed their own Patriarch over the Church, did the requirement become enforced for prospective baptisees in Jamaica to renounce his divinity and cut their dreadlocks.
[3] His death was announced by a spokesman for the archbishopric in Dallas, where he had recently moved his seat, and by Father Haile Malekot of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Kingston, Jamaica.
[3] His funeral at the National Arena in Jamaica on January 20, 2006, drew hundreds of mourners including Jamaican politicians, celebrities and members of the Rastafarian community, and was marked by lengthy rituals of liturgical drumming and chanting in the ancient Ethiopian languages of Ge'ez and Amharic.