He later went to the Jesuit seminary of Ghazir in 1859, where he studied languages (French, Arabic, Syriac, Latin, Greek) as well as philosophy.

[3] The previous patriarch, John el Hajj, died on Christmas Eve in 1898; Hoayek was requested to return to Lebanon from a trip to Rome.

On January 6, 1899, he was elected Patriarch and, in the consistory of June 19, 1899, Hoayek was ratified as the choice of Maronite bishops by Pope Leo XIII, who granted him the pallium.

[citation needed] Among his first acts as patriarch was the construction of a new residence in Bkerké, replacing the former one: the foundation stone was laid on September 29, 1899.

[5] Between 1906 and 1908, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, he ordered the construction of the statue of the Madonna in Harissa that still dominates the region.

The Allies (France and Great Britain) set up a blockage of the Lebanese and Syrian coastline against the Ottoman Empire which leads to the start of a famine.

Prince Faisal had hoped for an Arab kingdom to encompass Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula.

He outlined the country's boundaries to include the area from Ras-al-Naqurah (Naqurah peninsula) in the south to Nahr-el-Kabir in the north and from the summits of the Anti-Lebanon mountain in the east to the Mediterranean sea in the west.

Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of decrees on the heroic virtues of Patriarch Elias Howayek, declaring him Venerable on July 5, 2019.