Most of the local population who became Catholics had been members of the Coptic Orthodox Church, whose Ethiopian portion became the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the mid-20th century when it was granted its own patriarch by Cyril VI, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. They kept the rites of that Church in the ancient liturgical language of Ge'ez, giving rise to an Ethiopic-Rite Catholic community.[10]