Bishop Nicholas Ziorov (photo from Alaska's Digital Archives)

May 21, 1851: Michael Ziorov — the future Bishop Nicholas, head of the Russian Mission in North America — was born in the District of Kherson, in what was then the Russian Empire and what is today Ukraine. As a layman, he served as Inspector for two seminaries. At 36, he was tonsured a monk, ordained a priest, and appointed as rector of his alma mater, the prestigious Moscow Theological Academy.

In 1891, he was consecrated a bishop and placed in charge of the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. His task was difficult and complex. Not only was his new diocese geographically immense, but his predecessor, Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky, had been at the epicenter of near-constant scandal and conflict in his three-year tenure. Bishop Nicholas’ flock consisted of numerous Native Alaskan tribes struggling under their American overlords and predatory missionaries from the contiguous United States. In the rest of the country, he had immigrants from Greece, Serbia, Syria, and elsewhere; and the beginning of a flood of Carpatho-Rusyn converts from Greek Catholicism (Uniatism). Bishop Nicholas wasn’t perfect, but he did a pretty spectacular job in his seven years at the helm. In 1898, he was succeeded by Bishop Tikhon Bellavin, who built upon Nicholas’ foundation. In the process, the great Tikhon largely overshadowed his predecessor, who is, unfortunately, not well remembered today.

In the past, I’ve been as guilty as anyone else of writing off Bishop Nicholas in favor of Tikhon. But I was wrong: he was quite visionary in his own way, and proved himself to be a capable administrator and a good man. Someday, I hope someone will write a good article on Nicholas’ time in America. In many ways, his era, even more than Tikhon’s, set the stage for the century that followed.

After leaving America, Bishop Nicholas became an archbishop. He was Archbishop of Warsaw when World War I began, prompting him to move to St. Petersburg. He died there in 1915, thus avoiding the terrible events of 1917 and beyond.

May 26, 1868: St. Innocent Veniaminov, the great missionary to Alaska and Siberia, became Metropolitan of Moscow.

May 21, 1889: The Russian Orthodox cathedral in San Francisco was burned to the ground, and many suspected that it was the work of an arsonist. This was part of the whole Bishop Vladimir saga. It’s a topic that I really should write about one of these days, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. In 1997, Stanford professor Terrence Emmons wrote a riveting (but scandalously graphic) book about the whole affair, Alleged Sex and Threatened Violence. (The link takes you to the Google Books page where you can preview the book.) It’s by far the best piece of research anyone has done on the Bishop Vladimir era, but seriously — it’s really scandalous, so let the reader beware.

Archbishop Michael Konstantinides

May 27, 1892: The future Greek Archbishop Michael Konstantinides was born. In some ways, Archbishop Michael is sort of like the Bishop Nicholas Ziorov (discussed above) — sandwiched in between the larger-than-life Archbishops Athenagoras and Iakovos, the humble Michael has been largely forgotten. Which is really too bad, because Michael was both an effective hierarch, a fine scholar, and, by all accounts, a genuinely pious soul. A couple of years ago, we ran some articles on Archbishop Michael’s life; you can read them by clicking here, here, and here.

May 22, 1901: Bishop Tikhon Bellavin laid the cornerstone for St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City. He was assisted by a whole bunch of priests, including four saints (Frs. Raphael Hawaweeny, Alexis Toth, Alexander Hotovitzky, and Ilia Zotikov). If you click on Fr. Ilia’s name, in addition to reading a great article on his life (by Aram Sarkisian), you can view a newspaper photo from the cornerstone ceremony.

May 27, 1928: Fr. Sophronios Beshara was consecrated Bishop of Los Angeles for the “American Orthodox Catholic Church,” the quasi-autocephalous jurisdiction led by Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh. He was actually the first Orthodox bishop to take Los Angeles as his see.

May 27, 1964: Bishop Philaret Voznesensky was elected First Hierarch of ROCOR, succeeding the retiring Metropolitan Anastassy Gribanovsky.

May 22, 1965: Metropolitan Anastassy Gribanovsky, retired First Hierarch of ROCOR, died. Soon, we’ll be publishing an article on these two events, by ROCOR historian Dn. Andrei Psarev.

May 21, 1981: Ethiopian Orthodox funeral of reggae legend Bob Marley, in Kingston, Jamaica. Last year, Fr. Andrew posted the funeral program and video from the funeral, and that post has been one of the most-read pieces on our site.

May 26, 2010: The first meeting of the Assembly of Bishops began in New York. Our own Fr. Andrew was present at the event, and his firsthand accounts are some of the best primary sources on that historic gathering. Click here and here to read those articles.

May 24, 2011: For the first time in generations, bishops of the OCA and ROCOR concelebrated the Divine Liturgy. Christopher Orr wrote a guest article on this event last year; click here to read it.

This week in American Orthodox history (May 21-27) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Met. Leonty Turkevich

When Matthew asked me to write a piece about Leonty, I kept coming back to a single moment at the end of his life, a story for which there is a rare corroboration of accounts from multiple sources (one from the Moscow Patriarchate, the other from the Metropolia) that each give a unique picture of who Leonty was, and how his personality, longevity, and the weight of his institutional memory impacted those around him.

In early 1963, at the height of the Cold War, the National Council of Churches invited a delegation from the Church of Russia to visit the United States for a goodwill visit to acquaint the American religious establishment with leaders of the living, breathing Church behind the Iron Curtain.  Led by Archbishop Nikodim Rotov of Yaroslavl, head of the Patriarchate’s Department of External Relations, a side benefit of the delegation would be an opportunity for an informal assessment the true situation of the tensions between the Metropolia and the Patriarchal Exarchate as it existed on the ground, if not possible dialogue. Through the formation of the Exarchate in 1933, a longstanding lawsuit over control of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City, and stalled negotiations following the decision of the 7th All-American Sobor to renew the Metropolia’s administrative ties with Moscow in 1946, a bitter period of animosity between two jurisdictions with a shared history had dominated both local and national church life for decades.  Aside from an informal meeting in 1961 at a World Council of Churches meeting in New Delhi, by 1963, no formal or significant dialogue between the two parties had occurred for over a decade.

As he would recall over a decade later, one evening in March of 1963, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, received a telephone call from an Episcopalian acquaintance announcing that Nikodim and the delegation wished to visit the seminary, and would be arriving on campus within a few hours.  Schmemann quickly dispatched a call to Metropolitan Leonty to ask for permission to receive the delegation.  Leonty quietly replied, “receive them with love.”  The visit went well, and Schmemann arranged for Nikodim to meet with Leonty several days later over dinner at the Metropolia’s Chancery in Syosset.

Schmemann recalled the elderly Leonty descended the Chancery stairs that evening dressed in his trademark white cassock, “so majestic… and yet so simple and joyful, so obviously the head of the Church to which he had given his entire life.”  After dinner, Leonty rose to give an informal speech, in part a narrative of his ministry in America, as well as an expression of what the events meant for the future of Orthodoxy in North America.  His was an institutional memory that stretched back to the administration of Bishop Tikhon Belavin, the bishop who had invited the young Fr. Leonid Turkevich to the United States in 1906 to oversee the Minneapolis Seminary, which Turkevich repaid in turn by personally nominating his former bishop for the office of Patriarch of Moscow on the floor of the All-Russian Sobor eleven years later.  In fact, it is likely many of the events he described that evening occurred before the relatively young Nikodim (born in 1929) was even alive.  According to Schmemann, Leonty’s words movingly expressed his love for the Church of Russia, yet also his firm belief in the future of the Church in America. (Constance Tarasar, ed. Orthodox America, 1794-1976. Syosset, 1975. 262-3.)

Met. Nikodim Rotov

Several years later, Nikodim would recall the events of the Syosset dinner to Archimandrite Serafim Surrency, a priest who served as an assistant to Metropolitan John Wendland (then head of the Patriarchal Exarchate) at St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City.  Surrency describes the elderly Leonty asking Nikodim firmly and directly, how he viewed Leonty and the other bishops of the Metropolia.  Though Nikodim was clearly moved by his meeting with Leonty, and the momentum of the evening would carry into several more informal dialogues between the Metropolia and the Patriarchate (especially Nikodim) in the ensuing years, reality dictated he reply “as kindly as he could:”

“Your Eminence, forgive me, but I have no choice but to regard you and your bishops as schismatics.”  According to Surrency, “…tears welled in the eyes of the aged Metr. Leonty.”  (Archimandrite Serafim Surrency. The Quest for Orthodox Church Unity in America. New York, 1973. 78.)

As a historian, this moment in a lifetime of truly monumental moments offers a good entry point by which we can understand the broader picture and historical narrativity of Leonty’s impact in America.  His role as a priest in the highest levels of diocesan administration, theological education, and publication shows the ambitious vision of the pre-Revolution North American Diocese to serve a rapidly growing, geographically expansive flock, and the extent to which the Revolution would fundamentally change this trajectory.  Leonty’s episcopal career (and the process by which he became a bishop) is a lens by which we can explore the deep divisions of the jurisdictional fracture of Orthodoxy in America in the wake of the rise of Bolshevism.  And in his final years, his hospitality and dialogue with Abp. Nikodim put in motion a series of sometimes tense, yet ultimately fruitful meetings leading to the granting of Autocephaly to the Metropolia in 1970, forming what is now the Orthodox Church in America.

In the months to come, I hope to further explore this dynamic figure, exploring how his roles within the Church found him intimately involved in some of the most controversial and heated moments Orthodoxy has seen on the North American continent, yet whose demeanor, deep spirituality, and kind and quiet disposition found him almost universally revered even in the face of discord.

Met. Leonty: A Life in Moments is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

May 19, 1884: Archimandrite Stephen Hatherly, a convert priest from England, arrived in Philadelphia. I wrote about Hatherly’s visit almost three years ago. The basic story is this: In 1883, the Russian government closed its chapel, and the priest, Bjerring, became a Presbyterian. Hatherly, a priest under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, heard about these events and asked for permission to make a go at his own New York mission. After getting the all-clear from Russia, he sailed for America in 1884, arriving in Philadelphia on May 19 — this week. But, as I explain in the article, the mission was a failure; the few Orthodox people in New York had little interest in attending a church. Hatherly returned to England disappointed.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do, but haven’t yet, is tell Hatherly’s own story, because it’s phenomenally interesting. He was an exact contemporary of the somewhat better known English convert J.J. Overbeck, an author and editor of the Orthodox Catholic Review. Overbeck wanted to establish a “Western Orthodox Church,” including union with the Church of England, and today he’s regarded as a sort of progenitor of the Western Rite. Hatherly, on the other hand, viewed a full-blown union between Orthodoxy and Anglicanism as unrealistic. Instead, he preferred simply to convert Anglicans to (standard Byzantine Rite) Orthodoxy — something that raised the ire of the Anglican hierarchy, who in turn induced Constantinople to forbid Hatherly from evangelizing his countrymen. On top of all this, Hatherly was an accomplished church musician. As I said, writing an article about his life is on my to-do list.

May 19, 1905: Bishop Tikhon Bellavin, head of the Russian Mission in North America, was elevated to Archbishop by the Holy Synod of Russia.

May 17, 1922: Ecumenical Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis issued a tomos, formally establishing the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America as a jurisdiction under the Ecumenical Patriarchate. As Archbishop of Athens, the controversial Meletios had been in America from 1918-1921, during which time he organized the Greek Archdiocese and convened its first Clergy-Laity Congress. While in America, Meletios was deposed by the Holy Synod of Greece, but soon after this, he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople. This 1922 tomos thus transferred the GOA from Meletios’ old see (Athens) to his new one (Constantinople).

How could he get away with such unilateral action? Well, back in 1908, the Ecumenical Patriarchate had “transferred” the Greek churches in the “diaspora” (particularly America) from itself to Athens. Which is sort of misleading, because a lot of the Greek churches in America were already under Athens, so the transfer affected only that portion of the Greeks who had been under Constantinople. Anyway, Athens didn’t really do much with America over the next decade, until Meletios, as Archbishop of Athens, came along in 1918. In issuing this 1922 tomos, Meletios was revoking the earlier 1908 transfer. And the GOA has been under Constantinople ever since.

May 14, 1957: Archbishop Jeronim Chernov of Eastern Canada (Russian Metropolia) died.

Metropolitan Leonty visiting Los Angeles (LA Daily News, 7/1/1952)

May 14, 1965: Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich, primate of the Russian Metropolia, died. Leonty is one of those giants of American Orthodox history, on par with Tikhon, Iakovos, and Bashir. Many think he’s a saint, and I strongly suspect that they’re right. One of the amazing things about Leonty is that he lived through so much. Originally known as Fr. Leonid, he was a key figure in the Russian Mission dating to the episcopate of St. Tikhon. He ran the seminary, succeeded St. Alexander Hotovitzky as dean of the main cathedral, and generally was the most important priest in the Archdiocese prior to the Russian Revolution.

Then, in 1917, he participated in the monumental All-Russian Sobor — one of the pivotal church councils in Russian history. He made it out of revolutionary Russia and back to the US, where he was, again, probably the key priest in the Russian Metropolia, which rose from the ashes of the Russian Mission. After being widowed, he was almost consecrated a bishop for Aftimios Ofiesh’s American Orthodox Catholic Church experiment, and he ended up becoming the Metropolia’s Bishop of Chicago. When the Metropolia’s primate, Metropolitan Theophilus Pashkovsky, died in 1952, Leonty was elected to be his successor.

Anyway, all that is ridiculously cursory, and I can only fit so much into this article. But Aram Sarkisian, who knows far more about Leonty than I do, will be running a full-length piece here very soon.

May 18, 1970: The Patriarchate of Moscow formally granted autocephaly to the Russian Metropolia in America, which changed its name to the “Orthodox Church in America.” This event reverberated throughout the Orthodox world, and it remains controversial to this day. While everyone recognizes the OCA as fully canonical, only a minority of the world’s Orthodox Churches acknowledge the OCA as an autocephalous Local Church.

May 14, 1972: Tragedy struck at ROCOR’s Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, where one seminarian stabbed another to death. Both men had been studying for the priesthood.

May 15, 1979: Bishop Dionisije Milivojevich, the Serbian Orthodox bishop whose battle with his mother church went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, died in Illinois.

May 18, 1985: Fr. John Karastamatis, a Greek priest in Santa Cruz, CA, was brutally murdered. Some of his admirers immediately declared him to have been martyred for the faith, and to this day, you’ll run into lists of saints that include “Hieromartyr John of Santa Cruz.” But the subsequent police investigation revealed that he was killed by the husband of the parish secretary, and at trial, witness testimony made it clear that Karastamatis was not someone who should be venerated as a saint. I don’t want to get into the gory details, mainly because this didn’t happen all that long ago and Karastamatis’ family is still around, but suffice it to say that while his murder was a great tragedy, the calls for his canonization were terribly misplaced.

May 18, 2000: Archbishop Sylvester Haruns of Montreal (OCA) died.

May 14, 2006: Conclusion of the ROCOR All-Diaspora Council, which approved reconciliation between ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate.

May 17, 2007: In Moscow, ROCOR signed the Act of Canonical Communion, re-establishing full communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

May 18, 2008: Another big ROCOR moment — Metropolitan Hilarion Kapral was enthroned as First Hierarch of ROCOR.

This week in American Orthodox history (May 14-20) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

May 9, 1870: The newly chrismated convert Nicholas Bjerring was ordained to the Orthodox priesthood in St. Petersburg, Russia.

May 13, 1888: The Orthodox of Chicago — mostly Greeks and Serbs — held a meeting to organize a multiethnic parish. I did one of my first podcast episodes on this meeting.

May 7, 1890: Andrij Chahovtsov — the future Archbishop Arseny of Winnipeg – was ordained to the priesthood in Russia.

May 7, 1909: Fr. Alexis Toth died in Wilkes-Barre, PA. From the local newspaper, the Times Leader, later that day:

Father Toth was of princely bearing, not much in sympathy with democratic institutions, but yet very deferential to the customs of the people here. He was a rigid disciplinarian but very popular among the members of his congregation here. His death will be a great surprise. He was ill about five months, but because of his somewhat secluded position few outside the members of his congregation knew of his indisposition.

Toth, of course, had converted to Orthodoxy from Greek (or “Eastern Rite,” or “Uniate”) Catholicism, way back in 1891. He became the leading advocate of the so-called “return of the Unia,” which utterly changed the face of the Russian Mission in North America. The OCA canonized Toth several years ago because of his historical role.

May 13, 1917: Fr. Aftimios Ofiesh was consecrated a bishop by Archbishop Evdokim Meschersky and Bishop Alexander Nemolovsky. Aftimios was given the title “Bishop of Brooklyn,” and, as the Russian-backed successor to St. Raphael Hawaweeny, he was placed in charge of the Syro-Arab Mission in America.

This took place just three weeks after the first Syrian church, St. George of Worcester, MA, declared its loyalty to the visiting Antiochian Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi, rather than to the soon-to-be-consecrated Aftimios. We covered this a few weeks ago; there were now two rival Arab bishops in America, and the Russy-Antacky schism was underway.

May 10, 1966: Bishop Stefan Lastavica, head of what is today known as the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Eastern America, died.

The original version of this article had the diocese’s name wrong. When it was created by the Holy Assembly of Serbia in 1963, it was called the “Middle-Eastern American and Canadian Diocese.” By the time of Bishop Stefan’s death three years later, the name had been changed to the “Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Eastern America and Canada.” In the mid-1980s, the Serbian Diocese of Canada was established, and Bishop Stefan’s old diocese dropped the “and Canada” part of its name. Many thanks to Andy Muha for this information.

May 13, 2006: Jaroslav Pelikan, the great church historian and convert to Orthodoxy, died. Pelikan had joined the Orthodox Church back in 1998, after which he served on the board of trustees for St. Vladimir’s Seminary. For more on Pelikan, see this 2003 article by Fr. John Erickson, which includes this great quote from Pelikan himself: “Everybody else is an expert on the present. I wish to file a minority report on behalf of the past.”

May 12, 2008: Archbishop Hilarian Kapral was elected First Hierarch of ROCOR.

May 8, 2010: Fr. Michael Dahulich, formerly the dean of St. Tikhon’s Seminary, was consecrated OCA Bishop of New York.

This week in American Orthodox history (May 7-13) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

A Russian priest baptizes a family in the church car aboard the "mobile medical center" named for St. Luke of Simferopol. Photo from MSNBC.

On April 27, MSNBC published photos of a medical train in Russia that includes a full-blown Orthodox chapel (thanks to the excellent Byzantine, TX blog for the link). The train/clinic, named after the great surgeon-bishop St. Luke of Simferopol, travels to the far reaches of Siberia and has “a carriage that operates as a mobile Orthodox church.”

A priest rings the bells on the church car. Photo from MSNBC.

This seems like a pretty innovative idea, but actually, it’s well over a hundred years old. Way back in 19th century Russia, Orthodox missionaries began using a pretty much identical arrangement on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. From Boston Globe, December 29, 1896:

Cathedral Car for Bleak Wastes of Siberia.

American Missionary Idea Adopted by Greek Church Priests.

The missionary railroad car, invented by an American clergyman, has been taken up by the Russian church authorities, and four of these peripatetic disseminators are now regularly used in Siberia.

The Scientific American illustrates the style of cars used by the Greek missionaries in the bleak plains of Siberia. The car is moved from station to station, and the Siberian peasants liberally take advantage of the chances thus offered for attending services.

The Russian cars are fitted up with much of the rich barbarity and splendor of oriental art. The interiors of the walls are covered with painted images, and the car is provided with an altar, a tabernacle, candelabra, and the trappings pertaining to the ritual of the Russian Greek service.

Access to this traveling church is had in the usual way. At one end of the car is a chime of bells, and the top is surmounted by Greek crosses.

The idea was first used in the United States in sparsely settled parts of the country, such as Montana. It was readily seized upon by English missionaries, who ordered a number of these cars built for India.

Greek priests at once saw the advantage derived from the missionary car, and the Russian government commissioned a number of them for use in Siberia, where settlements are far between and the people can seldom attend divine services.

Here’s the illustration that accompanied that 1896 Boston Globe article:

Russian Orthodox "church car" on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1896

A year earlier, the New York Times had referred to these mobile Russian Orthodox chapels as “churches on wheels.” I’ve been able to trace them back to at least 1886, when the journal Christian Union ran a note about a plan for “church cars” on trains in Russia.

I’m curious to know more about the modern-day church cars. Is the St. Luke of Simferopol train the only one with a chapel, or do other Russian trains include special cars for Orthodox worship? Also, I assume that the church cars made in the 19th century fell out of use after the Bolshevik Revolution — so who is responsible for re-introducing the idea? If any of our readers have more information, please let me know, and I’ll publish an update to this article.

Churches on wheels: then and now is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Nicholas Bjerring blessing a Russian ship visiting Philadelphia. Photo from the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery.

May 4, 1793: Empress Catherine the Great of Russia granted the Holy Synod permission to establish an Orthodox mission in “Russian America” (Alaska). The following year, the first eight missionaries, including St. Herman, arrived on Kodiak Island.

May 3, 1870: Nicholas Bjerring, a convert from Roman Catholicism, was received into Orthodoxy by chrismation in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was then ordained a priest and sent to New York, where he established a Russian Orthodox embassy chapel in the city. Bjerring, the first significant Orthodox convert in the United States, served the chapel for 13 years, acting as a kind of religious ambassador to America. But by 1883, the Russian government decided to cease funding the chapel, and Bjerring was offered a teaching position in St. Petersburg. He declined and instead became a Presbyterian minister. At the end of his life, he re-converted to Roman Catholicism.

May 5, 1892: St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Church was established in Chicago. This came just weeks after Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church was founded in Chicago, and it marked the first instance of “overlapping jurisdictions” in the same city — a trend that became ubiquitous in the decades that followed. A few years after this, a young priest named John Kochurov was assigned to the church; in Kochurov’s tenure, the parish name was changed to Holy Trinity, and a magnificent new cathedral (designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan) was constructed. Kochurov eventually returned to Russia and was martyred by the Bolsheviks, and has since been canonized. As for his old parish, it survives today as the seat of the OCA Bishop of Chicago, and is one of the oldest continuously functioning Orthodox parishes in the Western Hemisphere.

May 5, 1902: This was the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Chicago Russian parish, but nobody was celebrating that day, because the church’s quarter-ton bell was stolen. The whole Orthodox community of Chicago — including the Greek parish — searched for the bell, but as best I can tell, it was never recovered. Two years ago, I wrote an article about the bell’s theft; CLICK HERE to read it.

April 30, 1905: Pascha, gunshots, a New York cop, and a mob of Greeks. The short version is that, on Pascha in New York, a Greek man fired a gun in celebration — not exactly a unique occurrence. But a police officer arrested the man and started taking him away, whereupon 500 or so Greeks, who had been in the middle of a Paschal procession, diverted course and followed the officer. The mostly peaceable (but assuredly frightening) mob threw the cop to the ground, freed the prisoner, and then apparently went back to celebrating Pascha. It’s kind of a bizarre story, and I covered it in more detail two years ago. CLICK HERE to read more.

Bishop John Mitropolsky

May 2, 1914: Bishop John Mitropolsky, former Russian Bishop of the Aleutian Islands, died. Bishop John was the man responsible for moving the diocesan headquarters from Alaska to San Francisco. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this move. I don’t know for sure, but it may be the first time that the official seat of an Orthodox diocese was located outside of the formal diocesan boundaries.

Bishop John learned to speak English and even preached homilies in the language. These were at least partly intended to inform non-Orthodox about the Orthodox Church. Bishop John was also a rather prolific author, writing a five volume account of religious sects in America and a 450-page history of the Ecumenical Councils. He seems to have view his role as twofold — to continue the Alaskan mission, but also to act as a religious ambassador to America. In November 1871, the journal Christian Union ran this note:

Bishop Johannes, of the Russo-Greek Church on the Pacific coast, has ordered the prayer for the President of the United States, contained in the Liturgy of the Episcopal Church, to be used by the Greek Priests. The Russo-Greek Calendar has also been modified so as to make it conform to that of Western Christendom in several essential important points.

 

I’m not sure what those calendar changes were, but these changes were an obvious attempt to find common ground with the West — particularly the Episcopal Church.

According to Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, who was an adolescent in San Francisco during Bishop John’s tenure, later explained that Bishop John was particularly proud of the Orthodox school he established. The school was for the cathedral parishioners and met on Saturdays. In addition to catechesis and Russian, the Saturday school and other weekday classes taught Scripture, music, mathematics, Greek, and English. Bishop John himself taught seven classes per week. Dabovich was one of the school’s most successful alumni, and he later wrote, “The Right Reverend John loved his school, one might say, with a singular love.”

Bishop John was reassigned to a post in Russia in 1877, and he died in 1914, at the age of 77.

May 5, 1916: Agapius Honcharenko, one of the strangest men in American Orthodox history, died in Hayward, CA. We’ve talked about Honcharenko quite a bit on this site, and I did a podcast on him a few years ago.

May 4, 1945: On Holy Friday, St. Vasily Martysz was brutally murdered in Poland. As a young priest, he had served in America from 1901 to 1912. The Orthodox Church of Poland canonized St. Vasily in 2003. To learn more, read this life of St. Vasily, written by Fr. Michael Oleksa.

May 6, 1967: Theodosius Lazor was consecrated Bishop of Alaska in the Russian Metropolia. A few years later, the young bishop represented the Metropolia in Moscow, where he formally received the Tomos of Autocephaly from the Moscow Patriarchate. This created the “Orthodox Church in America,” and in 1977, Theodosius was elected the jurisdiction’s primate. He served as Metropolitan until 2002.

May 6, 2006: A landmark All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia opened. This council went on to formally approve the reconciliation between ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been estranged for decades.

This week in American Orthodox history (April 30-May 6) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

April 23, 1917: St. George Syrian Orthodox Church in Worcester, MA became the first official “Antacky” parish, declaring its loyalty to Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi. Informally, the Russy-Antacky schism began immediately after St. Raphael died in 1915, when his priests disagreed on whether to acknowledge the authority of Antioch or Russia. But the Worcester declaration marked the formal beginning of the schism, which divided the Arab Orthodox in America until the mid-1930s.

According to the parish history in its 1956 “Golden Jubilee” book, the Worcester church issued this declaration: “Just as the Disciples declared themselves dedicated to Christ in Antioch, so the people of Worcester declared themselves dedicated to the Church of Antioch.”

But Germanos wasn’t actually authorized by Antioch — he was acting independently, and Antioch wanted him to return to his see in Syria. So when the Patriarchate of Antioch created its own, official jurisdiction in America under Bishop Victor Abo-Assaly, the Worcester parish switched over, becoming one of the first churches to join the new Antiochian Archdiocese.

As you may recall, the Russy-Antacky schism wasn’t merely a simple two-way split. Well, it was originally — you had the Russy under Bishop (later Archbishop) Aftimios Ofiesh, and the Antacky under Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi. But by the end of the 1920s, four bishops claimed authority over the Arab Orthodox:

• Metropolitan Germanos, who lacked the blessing of Antioch (or anyone else, for that matter), but originally led the Syrians who preferred to be tied to Antioch rather than Russia;
• Archbishop Aftimos, who initially led the Syrians under the Russian Church, but who later formed his own jurisdiction and was disowned by the Russians;
• Archbishop Victor Abo-Assaly, the first primate of the Antiochian Archdiocese, which was formed in 1924; and
• Bishop Emmanuel Abo-Hatab, a former auxiliary to Aftimios, who took over the Russy parishes after the Russian Metropolia rejected Aftimios.

It’s particularly difficult to figure out just who was under whom during this period. The 1924 book The Syrians in America, by Philip Hitti, provides a valuable snapshot of how things looked just before the Antiochian Archdiocese was created. According to a directory at the back of Hitti’s book, the score was 31 priests for Aftimios against 24 for Germanos. (These numbers don’t include the five priests of the separate “English-Speaking Department,” which was also under Aftimios.)

But what happened after 1924? As far as I can tell, there aren’t any hard numbers. We just don’t know, for instance, how many parishes left Germanos for the officially sanctioned Antiochian Archdiocese, nor do we know how many parishes remained under Aftimios after the Russian Metropolia replaced him with Emmanuel. The Census Bureau conducted its decennial Census of Religious Bodies in 1926, but I haven’t been able to find the entry (or entries) for the Syrians/Antiochians, so I don’t know if the Census reflected the complex divisions.

My home parish, St. Mary in Wichita, was founded in 1932, right before the slate was wiped clean by the death of three of the four claimants, and the marriage of Aftimos. Several years ago, Bishop Basil of Wichita asked me under which bishop St. Mary was founded, and I honestly didn’t know. I asked the surviving elders of the parish, and none of them knew, either. It’s indicative of how complex that era was. Eventually, I dug up a newspaper article from 1956 that referenced Archbishop Victor as the founding hierarch, finally settling the question.

It’s possible (probable, even), that as the original claimants (Aftimios and Germanos) were supplanted by Victor and Emmanuel, they continued to visit some of their former parishes in some kind of unofficial capacity. I’ve heard stories about Aftimios showing up at Antiochian churches for years after his marriage. To complicate matters even further, after Aftimios left the scene, one of his associated bishops, Sophronios Beshara of Los Angeles, remained at large for the rest of the 1930s, and he apparently visited parishes and even ordained some priests. So to some extent, even after the Antiochians regrouped in the mid-1930s, you still had four claimants — Metropolitan Antony Bashir of New York and his friend/rival Metropolitan Samuel David of Toledo, plus the fringe holdovers Aftimios and Sophronios.

Suffice it to say that there were a bunch of Arab bishops running around in the 1920s and ’30s, and we don’t have a clear understanding of exactly where to draw the lines. And of course, we’re talking here about just one mid-sized group of ethnic Orthodox people; the much larger Greek and Russian groups were just as divided, as were the Romanians, Ukrainians, and pretty much everyone else. Which is why it’s fair to say that we (well, me, and a lot of other people) understand the 1890-1920 period quite a bit better than we understand 1920-1960. But 1920-1960 is critical to understanding our present situation in America, and it’s a period begging for further study.

Some thoughts on the Russy-Antacky schism is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

[O]ne portion of the parish wanted to discharge their priest, Fr. Nathaniel Sideris, and “hire” another. “We have the right to tell a priest that he is no longer needed and to engage another priest,” one parish leader explained. Other parishioners were appalled at such an approach. “Our complaint,” said the leader of the opposition, “is that the people upstairs are conducting the affairs of a Greek church different from anything to which we have been accustomed, and we do not consider it right. The bishop of the Greek church in Athens alone has the power to assign a priest.”

In the paper, I went on to observe that while one group wanted total independence from the hierarchy and the other recognized the authority of the Church of Greece, neither side said a word about Tikhon, the Russian bishop in America. Of course, that’s because the Lowell Greeks didn’t consider themselves to be under Tikhon — a fact that is perhaps unsurprising today, but which, a couple of years ago, contradicted the commonly held belief that all Orthodox in America recognized Russian authority prior to the Bolshevik Revolution.

April 28, 1901: St. Tikhon, the Russian bishop, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Chicago. At least, that’s what some modern sources say; I can’t find any references to the event in the Chicago Tribune, although the newspaper covered a lot of other Orthodox happenings in that era. If anyone has more information, please let me know.

April 27, 1903: St. Alexis Toth, one of the leading priests in the Russian Diocese, was awarded the “Order of St. Vladimir” and received a miter. Toth, of course, had been a Uniate Greek Catholic priest until his conversion to Orthodoxy in 1891. He went on to spearhead the conversion of tens of thousands of former Uniates into the Russian Diocese, until his death in 1909.

April 23, 1917: St. George Syrian Orthodox Church in Worcester, MA became the first official “Antacky” parish, declaring its loyalty to Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi. Informally, the Russy-Antacky schism began immediately after St. Raphael died in 1915, when his priests disagreed on whether to acknowledge the authority of Antioch or Russia. But the Worcester declaration marked the formal beginning of the schism, which divided the Arab Orthodox in America until the mid-1930s.

April 27, 1922: The Holy Synod of Russia named the refugee Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky as the temporary head of the Russian Archdiocese of North America. Soon enough, the Russian Church (under Soviet pressure) changed course and condemned Platon, who led the Russian Archdiocese to declare its independence from Moscow.

April 25, 1926: Archimandrite Mardarije Uskokovic was consecrated in Belgrade to be the first Serbian bishop for America. According to this article, the original plan was for Bishop Nicholai Velimirovich of Ochrid to lead a new Serbian diocese in America, with Archimandrite Mardarije as his administrative assistant. But Bishop Nicholai’s flock in Serbia apparently protested, and Nicholai himself recommended that Mardarije be consecrated in his stead. Thus, in 1923, Mardarije was appointed administrator of the Serbian churches in America, and three years later, he was elevated to the episcopacy.

Bishop Mardarije’s greatest legacy may be his founding of St. Sava Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois. He died in 1935.

April 29, 1933: Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, of the fringe “American Orthodox Catholic Church,” married a young girl named Mariam Namey (no relation to me) in a civil ceremony in Niagara Falls, NY. This effectively snuffed out any remaining legitimacy Ofiesh had within Orthodoxy.

April 28, 1952: Romanian Bishop Valerian Trifa was consecrated by the Ukrainian Metropolitan John Theodorovich. The trouble was that Theodorovich was a “self-consecrator,” rendering Trifa’s consecration invalid in the eyes of mainstream Orthodoxy. Later, Bishop Valerian was properly consecrated by bishops of the Russian Metropolia.

April 29, 1956: Archbishop Adam Phillipovsky died. He was a colorful character who was, at various times, on seemingly every side of the unending Russian Church disputes of his day.

April 25, 1959: Reginald Wright Kauffman, a noted writer and journalist, died. Kauffman had converted to Orthodoxy four decades earlier in the short-lived convert parish of the Transfiguration in New York. Unlike nearly all of the Transfiguration converts, Kauffman remained Orthodox for the rest of his life.

This week in American Orthodox history (April 23-29) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Demetrios Petrides

Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!

April 17, 1907: Fr. Demetrios Petrides arrived in America from Greece. He went immediately to Philadelphia, taking charge of Evangelismos (Annunciation) Greek Orthodox Church in the city. One of his first acts was to write a letter to the Ecumenical Patriarchate recommending that a catechumen, Robert Morgan, be received into the Church and ordained a priest. This took place in August, and Morgan became the first black Orthodox priest in America. Petrides went on to have a distinguished, eventful, and admirable career in Philadelphia and, later, Atlanta, before dying of diabetes in 1917.

April 19, 1934: Archbishop Victor Abo-Assaly, the first primate of the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America, died. Abp Victor, then an archimandrite, had come to America ten years earlier, as part of a delegation from the Patriarchate of Antioch. The delegation’s task was to organize the divided Arab Orthodox in America into a single jurisdiction. This led to the founding of the Antiochian Archdiocese, but it failed to produce unity. In addition to Abp Victor, the following hierarchs claimed a piece of the Antiochian pie in America:

• Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi, erstwhile leader of the “Antacky” faction. He had come to America on a fundraising trip back in 1914, but when St. Raphael died the next year, Germanos decided to stick around and try to lead Raphael’s flock. Only a strong minority faction followed him, and this support virtually evaporated in 1924, when the Patriarchate authorized Victor’s consecration and the creation of a legitimate Antiochian Archdiocese.
• Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, former head of the “Russy” faction of Arab Orthodox who pledged loyalty to the Russians. Originally, the battle was Germanos v. Aftimios, but in the late 1920s, Aftimios created his own “autocephalous church” and fell out of favor with the Russian bishops. A handful of parishes seem to have remained loyal to Aftimios, but most switched over to:
• Bishop Emmanuel Abo-Hatab, Aftimos’ former auxiliary and, before that, the archdeacon to St. Raphael. When the Russian Metropolia pulled its support for Aftimios, Emmanuel jumped to the Metropolia himself, taking over Aftimios’ title as bishop for the Syro-Arabs.

Anyway, in the span of about a year, three of the four claimants were dead, and the fourth (Aftimios) married a young girl, which removed the last shreds of legitimacy he had in the eyes of mainstream Orthodox people. The Antiochians in America were finally in a position to unite… but of course, it wasn’t that simple, and in 1936, they re-divided into “New York” and “Toledo” factions. About which, wait just a moment…

April 20, 1934: The early 1930s witnessed a lot of deaths of prominent Orthodox churchmen in America. Just one day after Abp Victor died, Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky, the longtime primate of the Russian Metropolia, himself died. Platon had first come to America way back in 1907, as the successor to St. Tikhon as head of the Russian Archdiocese. He returned to Russia in 1914, but after the Bolshevik Revolution, Platon just kind of showed up in America again, this time as a refugee. The Russian Archdiocese already had a primate — Abp Alexander Nemolovsky — but Platon hung around for a while, until the embattled Alexander moved to Europe. Platon was Alexander’s natural successor, and it was under Platon that the Archdiocese morphed into what became known as the “Metropolia” — a de facto independent jurisdiction.

Platon’s second American tenure was filled with endless legal battles with John Kedrovsky, an “archbishop” of the Soviet-backed Living Church. The Metropolia lost its cathedral, and ultimately had to accept the charity of the Episcopalians, who offered worship space in one of their churches. By the end of Platon’s life, any notion of the Russian Church as the platform for Orthodox unity in America was a faint memory.

April 19, 1936: Exactly two years to the day after Abp Victor died, his successor was consecrated. Or rather successors, plural. On the very same day, two men, representing two Antiochian factions, were consecrated in different cities. Metropolitan Antony Bashir was consecrated in New York and took charge of the largest portion of the Antiochians. Meanwhile, in Toledo, Ohio, several Russian Metropolia bishops consecrated Metropolitan Samuel David. So now, instead of the “Russy” and “Antacky” factions, you had the “New York” and “Toledo” Archdioceses. This division persisted for almost 40 more years.

This week in American Orthodox history (April 16-22) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

A little while back, Shorpy’s editors posted a somewhat morbid, but oddly engaging photograph of a burial near Washington, DC circa 1925, which came from the Library of Congress.  The picture had a rather minimal caption, so we have to go by what we see.  What appears to be a group of well-dressed immigrants are gathered graveside around a casket.  This is all pretty normal, except for the fact that the casket is propped up, and the head and shoulders of the deceased are visible through an opening in the lid.  Yikes.

What immediately jumped out at me when I looked closer, however, was the fact that peeking out of the back of the crowd is a priest.  Bald, bearded, and wearing a stole and pectoral cross.  The wheels started spinning.  It certainly looked Orthodox to me, but how could I prove it?

My research interests tend to be with Russian communities during this era, and this priest didn’t look familiar. Nor did the group of people look particularly Slavic to me.  I suspected they may have been Middle Eastern, which is a bit out of my expertise.  So I dispatched an email to my SOCHA colleague Matthew Namee, and after comparing notes for a little bit, we struck gold.  The priest in question is Fr. Job Salloom, who was the pastor of St. George Syrian (now Antiochian) Orthodox Church in Washington, DC.  And these, presumably, are some of his parishioners.

Fr. Job Salloom

There is a surprisingly large amount of information online about Salloom, much of it being oral history by his descendants (including some photographs).  Job Salloom came to America in 1904, and was ordained a priest in 1912.  He served the St. George parish in Washington for over twenty years, and served itinerantly when needed to communities throughout the general region during that period as well.  Fr. Job was apparently kind, well-liked, and had a lively sense of humor.  He was beloved by his family, and apparently his congregation as well.  According to the 1920 Census, Fr. Job and his wife Deby had five daughters and a son.  This picture captures him around halfway through his ministry in America, when he was a little older than 50, and about a decade before his 1936 death.

This little discovery has led to a different project Matthew will be introducing in a few days.  We’ve been on the phone about it constantly for the last few days, and I really think it’s going to be something our readers will enjoy.  Stay tuned here at the SOCHA blog for that, but in the meantime, do yourself a favor and poke around Shorpy for a while.  It’s well worth your time.

Discovering Fr. Job Salloom is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

St. John Prodromos Greek Orthodox Church, San Francisco

Jim Lucas is the president of the Greek Historical Society of the San Francisco Bay Area, a non-profit corporation based at Annunciation Cathedral in San Francisco. The organization is dedicated to the preservation of Greek history and culture in the San Francisco area.  Jim has been actively researching the history of the Greek community for several years and is writing a book “The Greeks of San Francisco” which will be released at a future date.

The Orthodox faith has had a presence in San Francisco since at least 1857, and the first Russian Orthodox church was founded in 1868. The Greeks that settled in San Francisco during those early years worshipped at the Russian Orthodox Church until Holy Trinity was founded in 1904.

Those of you that live in the San Francisco area are familiar with two Greek churches in San Francisco, Holy Trinity and Annunciation Cathedral. Holy Trinity is the oldest Greek church west of Chicago and Annunciation Cathedral was founded in 1921. Most Greeks are very surprised to learn that there was a third Greek Orthodox Church that existed for a brief period.

In 1908 there was a disagreement over parish council elections and the handling of money at Holy Trinity. The disagreement turned violent on July 12, 1908, when police were called to Holy Trinity (San Francisco Call, 7-13-1908, “War Raged at the Door of the Sanctuary”). A faction led by Ioannis Kapsimalis (former parish council president and Greek Consul) decided to start their own church. They acquired land on Rincon Hill (35 Stanley Place), built a church which they named St. John Prodromos (see photograph). They built offices and a meeting hall which they named the “Alexander the Great Meeting Hall.” They hired Father Constantine Tsapralis as their first priest (There is a common misunderstanding that Fr. Tsapralis’ service at Holy Trinity was continuous from 1903 – 1936 which is not true). The Holy Trinity community in turn hired Fr. Stefanos Macaronis as their next priest.

On December 2, 1909, the factions resolved their differences and St. John Prodromos ceased to exist.  Fr. Tsapralis was rehired by Holy Trinity and Fr. Stefanos Macaronis moved to a parish in Oregon.  From 1910 until Holy Trinity was raised to install a meeting hall  in 1922, this property served as the offices and meeting hall for the community.  There are numerous news articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Call relating to Greek community events that were held at the Alexander the Great Hall. This building was a vital part of Greek community life.

Mr. Peter Bergevin, the owner of the property, passed away at December 27, 1911 at the age of 68. Mr. Bergevin willed the property to Holy Trinity.  On June 23, 1915, a hearing was held regarding Mr. Bergevin’s  estate.  His daughter, Mrs. Adeline Telfer, deeded the property to Holy Trinity on July 20, 1915 pursuant to a court order regarding the estate of her father. (Click here to view the document).

The property was later sold to the State of California to make room for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge closing this early chapter San Francisco Greek history.

Jim Lucas is the President of the Greek Historical Society of the San Francisco Bay Area and can be reached by email at jim@sanfranciscogreeks.com. More San Francisco Greek historical material can be found at www.sanfranciscogreeks.com.

The Third Greek Church of San Francisco is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

February 20, 1900: At the behest of Bishop Tikhon, the Russian Holy Synod officially changed the name of its North American missionary diocese, from “Diocese of the Aleutians and Alaska” to “Diocese of the Aleutians and North America.”

February 21, 1923: Serbian clergy held a meeting in Gary, Indiana, where they formally declared their independence from the Russian Church and their affiliation with the Serbian Church.

February 23, 1934: The Ukrainian Bishop Joseph Zuk died.

February 23, 1984: Archimandrite Serafim Surrency died in New York, at the age of 58. He was a historian, best known for his important work The Quest for Orthodox Church Unity in America (published in 1973). Until recently, Surrency’s book was the source for information on many American Orthodox historical subjects, including the American Orthodox Catholic Church, the Federation, and the early years of SCOBA. And, despite its limitations, the book remains an essential resource. One mystery which Fr. Oliver and I have been trying to solve for years is what became of Surrency’s personal files — we think they’re full of important material, but we don’t know what happened to them after he died.

February 24, 1904: The newly-consecrated Bishop Innocent Pustynsky arrived in America to take up his post as auxiliary bishop of Alaska. As Scott Kenworthy recounted in an interview with me last year, Bishop Tikhon had been trying for years to get an auxiliary to help govern his immense diocese. Eventually, Tikhon just went to Russia and refused to leave until he had a duly consecrated bishop in hand for his return voyage to America. Very soon after Bishop Innocent’s arrival, he and Tikhon consecrated Fr. Raphael Hawaweeny to the episcopate — the first Orthodox consecration in the New World.

February 24, 1931: The newly-elected Archbishop Athenagoras Spyrou arrived in America to take charge of the Greek Archdiocese.

February 25, 1896: The future hieromartyr Alexander Hotovitzky was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Nicholas Ziorov. Fr. Alexander was assigned as rector of the fledgling St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in New York.

February 26, 1895: Fr. Sebastian Dabovich celebrated the first Orthodox services in the newly established multiethnic chapel in Portland, Oregon. (To read more, check out my 2009 article on early Orthodoxy in Portland.)

This week in American Orthodox history (February 20-26) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Professor Basil Bensin

February 8, 1973: St. Vladimir’s Seminary professor Basil Bensin died in North Carolina. Bensin lived an eventful life. Born in Russia in 1881, he met St. Tikhon (then the Bishop of North America) in 1903, when Tikhon was on a visit to St. Petersburg. Tikhon recruited Bensin to come to America, taking a position as professor at the first Russian seminary in Minneapolis from 1905-1912. In 1912, he earned a degree in agricultural sciences from the University of Minnesota — a credential which would come in handy later. The seminary moved to Tenafly, NJ, and Bensin continued to teach until the turmoil following the Bolshevik Revolution made seminary life impossible. Bensin moved to Czechoslovakia for a decade before returning to America to work as an agricultural engineer in Alaska. When St. Vladimir’s Seminary was established in 1938, Bensin was one of the original professors, and he remained at SVS until his retirement in 1952. In retirement, Bensin continued his scholarly work, devoting a lot of time to researching the history of Orthodoxy in America. He produced only a few articles on the subject, but there must be valuable material in his notes (which are kept at SVS). (My sources for this information are Bensin’s obituary in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly and a short biography at the Hoover Institution website.)

February 9, 1908: Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny ordained Theophan Noli, an Albanian student at Harvard, to the priesthood, on behalf of Russian Archbishop Platon Rozhdestvensky. Two years ago, I wrote about Noli’s first Albanian liturgy, but I erroneously said that Archbishop Platon had performed Noli’s ordination. But apart from that mistake, that old article is still pretty decent, and if you want to know more about Noli, you might check it out.

February 11, 1962: In Damascus, Fr. Michael Shaheen was consecrated as the Antiochian Bishop of Toledo, Ohio. This is a complicated story, and I don’t have time to tell it all here, but the gist of it is this: Since the mid-1930s, the Antiochians in America had been divided into two overlapping jurisdictions — the Archdiocese of New York (led by Metropolitan Antony Bashir) and the Archdiocese of  Toledo (led by Metropolitan Samuel David). Met Samuel had died in 1958, and after a lot of behind-the-scenes machinations, the Antiochian Holy Synod chose Archimandrite Michael Shaheen to replace him. But Shaheen was a priest of the New York — not Toledo — Archdiocese, and although he was consecrated with the title “Bishop of Toledo,” in reality he was to serve merely as an auxiliary to Met Antony. In this way, it was hoped, the two Antiochian jurisdictions would be united at last. But it didn’t work: the Toledo parishes refused to accept Bp Michael unless he denounced Met Antony. In response to the impasse, the Holy Synod changed course, recognizing Toledo as an independent diocese and raising Bp Michael to the rank of Metropolitan. In this way, the Antiochian schism persisted for another 13 years, until Metropolitan Michael accepted a demotion of sorts, recognizing the authority of Bashir’s successor Metropolitan Philip Saliba for the sake of unity.

February 12, 1907: Bishop Platon Rozhdestvensky was elected to the Second State Duma (equivalent to a parliament) in Russia. Within months, he would replace Archbishop Tikhon Bellavin as primate of the Russian Archdiocese in North America.

This week in American Orthodox history (February 6-12) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

John Quincy Adams, 1818

On January 20, 1811, an Orthodox baptismal service took place at the home of the future President of the United States John Quincy Adams and his wife Louisa. At that time they were living in St. Petersburg, Russia. Louisa Adams took an active part as one of the Godparents of the little girl being baptized, along with her fellow sponsors Martha Godfrey (the Adams American chambermaid) and Mr. Francis Gray, one of the secretaries to the American legation in Russia.

John Quincy Adams later became the sixth President of the United States, serving his one term of office between 1825 and 1829. He was the eldest son of the second U.S. President, John Adams. From a young age John Quincy lived in Europe with his father, as the latter served as American representative in France and the Netherlands. At the relatively tender age of 14, in 1781, John Quincy travelled for the first time to Russia as secretary to Francis Dana whose mission was to obtain recognition by Russia of the nascent American republic. This initial visit was to last almost 3 years.

John Quincy returned there for a further 5 years in 1809 when President James Madison appointed him as the first fully credentialed US ambassador to Russia. In this role his wife, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, who holds the distinction of being the only foreign born First Lady of the United States, ably supported him. (She was born in London to an English mother and American father.)

So how did Louisa Adams and the other Americans become co sponsors of an Orthodox baptism? As John Quincy recounts, on Russian New Year’s Day, 1811, his footman Paul, a Finnish man of Lutheran faith and his wife, “a Russian of the Greek church,” had a baby daughter. Because of the mother’s faith it was agreed that the child “was to be christened according to the fashion of the Greek Church.” At the request of the Lutheran footman Paul, Mrs Adams and Martha were asked to stand as Godmother and Mr. Gray as Godfather. The baptism took place at 8 o’clock in the evening in the parlor of the Adams home. The service was conducted by a priest “and an inferior attendant not in clerical habits, who chanted the Slavonian service, the priest from a mass book.”

Given the unusual time and location of the baptism and the use of non-Orthodox sponsors, (assuming none of the Americans had converted), one has to wonder if the child’s life was in danger and hence the unusual circumstances. Because at that time the calendar difference was 12 days, the evening of January 20, would have been the eve of the child’s eighth day, the traditional time for its naming. But whether this was deliberate or co-incidental cannot be said. It may also be that John Quincy Adams, as the head of the extended household, influenced the timing. In September of the same year the resident English chaplain of the Russia Company also baptized in his home, but according to the rite of the Church of England, his daughter Louisa Catherine. In connection with this baptism John Quincy wrote: “ (T)he rite itself, the solemn dedication of the child to God, I prize so highly, that I think it ought never to be deferred beyond a time of urgent necessity.”

In any event, John Quincy describes the service in meticulous detail. He writes:

A plated vessel of the size of a small bathing tub contained the water, which the priest consecrated at the commencement of the ceremony. Three tapers were at first fixed at the end most distant from the priest and at the two sides of the baptismal vase. The child was brought in and held by the nurse, until the priest took it naked and plunged it three times into the water. With a pencil-brush before and after plunging, he marked a cross on its forehead and breast, and finally on its forehead, shoulders and feet – repeating the same thing afterwards with a wet sponge. A shirt and cap, provided by the godmother, were then put upon the child, and a gold baptismal cross, furnished by the godfather. Tapers lighted were put into their hands, two of them from the sides of the vase, round which they marched three times, preceded by the priest. He then with a pair of scissors cut off three locks of the child’s hair, which, with wax, he rolled up into a little ball, and threw into the water in which the child was baptized; and finally, after a little more chanting from the book, the ceremony was concluded. During the first part of the ceremony the priest turned his back to the vessel of water, and the sponsors, with the nurse and child, to the priest. Another singularity was that at one part of the ceremony they were all required to spit on the floor.

John Quincy’s diaries report numerous other experiences of Orthodox worship during this second period in Russia, including attending the Paschal night service and a liturgy followed by veneration of the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky that took place at the monastery in St. Petersburg which bears the name of the saint. From a brief review of his diaries covering his five years in Russia as Ambassador it seems that Adams attended at least 50 Orthodox services, most commonly Te Deums, the short Orthodox service of thanksgiving and intercession. His writings also evince an interest in questions such as the dating of Easter and the moment of the descent of the Holy Spirit in the eucharistic liturgy.

His experience of Orthodox services was far from being uniformly positive: In describing a baptism at St. Isaac’s Cathedral he recalls that, “The choir of singers at the left hand of the chancel was small, the singing, as usual, excellent.” But he moves on to say

The mothers appeared delighted to have obtained the blessings. The multitude of self crossings, the profound and constantly repeated bows, the prostrations upon the earth and kissing of the floor, witnessed the depth of superstition in which this people is plunged perhaps more forcibly then I had seen before.

Perhaps surprisingly his attitude to the Orthodox practice of fasting and abstinence was more positive. He recounts a conversation with his Russian landlord during the second week of Lent that is worth quoting in full:

He spoke of their Lent, of which this is the second week. They keep their first and last week with great rigor, and in them they are not allowed to eat fish, no animal food of any kind – scarcely anything but bread, oil and mushrooms. The common people he says, consider a violation of the Lent as the most heinous of crimes. Murder, they suppose, may be pardoned, but to break the fast is a sin utterly irremissible. He himself kept the fast last week, not from a religious scruple, but because he thought it a salubrious practice, and a useful one to form a habits of self-denial. I am of that opinion myself, and I have often wished that the reformers who settled New England had not abolished the practice of fasting in Lent. I am convinced that occasional fasting, and particularly abstinence from animal food several weeks at a time, and every year, is wholesome, both to body and mind. It is true that fasting is not expressly enjoined in the Scriptures, and therefore cannot be required as a religious observance; but, unless prescribed by a principle of religion, there is no motive sufficiently powerful to control the appetites of men.

John Quincy Adams’ engagement with Orthodoxy in the context of his ambassadorial duties was clearly substantial. In recent years it has become popular to refer to Orthodoxy as “the best kept secret in America.” The more I read from early sources the more it seems that Orthodoxy was in fact much better known two hundred years ago then now, at least amongst the educated and ruling classes of the nascent Republic. This is a theme to which I shall perhaps return in subsequent articles.

Nicholas Chapman, Herkimer, New York, January 20, 2012

An Orthodox Baptism in the home of John Quincy Adams – and much more besides is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Michael Husson, circa 1900

January 27, 1939: Fr. Michael Husson died at the age of 79. He was one of the first Syrian/Antiochian clergymen in America, and spent many years as the rector of St. George Church in Worcester, MA. Here is one account of Fr. Michael, quoted in Arab American Faces and Voices by my grandmother’s cousin Elizabeth Boosahda (page 92):

It was Rev. Michael who told my family about their relatives living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa… Father Husson came from Worcester and he would travel all over the West because there was no Syrian Orthodox priest. He went from one town to another to do the duties of a priest. There were very, very few Orthodox priests in this country. Besides, Father Husson once a year would travel — he would wire ahead — and he would go to these different towns. Father Husson baptized my sister Mabel, and she was born in Cedar Rapids. He would go out to these places by train. People would give him a few dollars for all he did and then he would be on his way more informed as to the eligibility of those for marriage.

January 27, 1980: Fr. Basil Essey was ordained to the priesthood. Later, he was consecrated a bishop, and of course today he is the Antiochian Bishop of Wichita and the Secretary of the Assembly of Bishops.

January 29, 1983: Bishop Job Osacky was consecrated as the OCA Bishop of Hartford, CT. He eventually took over the OCA’s Midwest Diocese and became an archbishop, and in his later years, he became famous (and, in some circles, infamous) for his call for openness and transparency in the OCA. He died unexpectedly in December 2009.

If you know of any other important American Orthodox events that took place between January 23 and January 29, please let us know in the comments!

This week in American Orthodox history (January 23-29) is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

I think it’s a rather unique picture of what Orthodox life was like in this era, especially given the political overtones of the repression of the Church of Russia, which we see in the first half of the article.  With their brothers and sisters in Russia experiencing the initial stages of a rather aggressive anti-religious campaign from the fledgling Bolshevik government, the North American Archdiocese were experiencing crises of their own in the wake of the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

In Russia, the Bolshevik government had instituted the national move to the Gregorian (New) Calendar on February 1/14, 1918 (February 1st became February 14th).  The Church of Russia resisted this change, and in discussions of the All-Russian Sobor of 1917-8 (in session as the calendar switch went into effect), determined to retain the Old Calendar.

By 1923, however, this would be tested by the rise to power of the Living Church, a reformist movement that had coalesced out of several radical factions within the Russian Church over the previous two decades.  Backed by the Bolshevik government, the Renovationists attempted to force the implementation of the New Calendar, and over time, the calendar issue became a distinct point of differentiation between the so-called “Renovationist” and “Tikhonite” factions within the Church of Russia.

In America, this differentiation, apparently, also resulted in a distinct rejection of the New Calendar within the North American Archdiocese.  In December of 1923, the Archdiocese was in the throes of its legal battles with the Living Church-backed John Kedrovsky, who had returned to America in October claiming to be the Archbishop of North America and the Aleutian Islands.  With confusing accounts coming out of Russia regarding the status of Patriarch Tikhon, reports of bizarre and troubling attacks against the Church and religious life by the Soviet government, and very real threats of the loss of St. Nicholas Cathedral and other church properties in American courts, the Archdiocese chose to reject the recent decision of the Pan-Orthodox Congress to institute the use of the Revised Julian (or New) Calendar.

Plainly, for many Orthodox Christians in America of Russian descent in this era, the New Calendar was not primarily associated with a Pan-Orthodox Congress, but with Bolshevism  and the repression of the beloved Patriarch Tikhon, who was obviously revered in all corners of Orthodox America.

The allowance for the use of the New Calendar within what would become known as the Metropolia would not come until the 13th All-American Sobor in 1967.  While some corners of the OCA have almost universally moved to the Revised Julian Calendar, there are yet still many parishes throughout the United States and Canada that will be celebrating the Nativity of Christ two weeks from now.  As Matthew outlined the other day, there is similar plurality across the other jurisdictions in America.  Yet regardless of when we observe this important day, it is with the same spirit of joy in the birth of Christ.

Christmas, the New Calendar, and the Russian Church in 1923 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

BABY LEFT IN CHURCH; SOCIETY TO ADOPT IT

Advent of the Little Stranger Caused Flurry Among Women of the Ladies’ Aid

LEFT IN JANITOR’S BED

The Infant Is Sent Temporarily to Bellevue, but the Women Say They Want to Bring It Up.

The day before yesterday, and theretofore, the basement door of the Greek Orthodox Church, Holy Trinity, at Seventy-second Street and Lexington Avenue, could be opened without the slightest sound. It always stood unlocked.

But yesterday there was a shrill bell attached to the door, which rang sharply whenever the door was opened. Moreover, whenever the door did open or the bell rang there was a quick movement on the part of the janitor and of those members of the Ladies’ Aid Society who happened to be present to see who entered.

For on the previous day some one, taking advantage of the fact that the door latch was always out, had slipped into the janitor’s room in the basement and left in his bed a two weeks’ old boy baby. The janitor and l adies are glad that the baby came to the church, but do not wish, nevertheless, to establish such a precedent. Hence the new bell.

It was quite dark and the Ladies’ Aid Society had finished its meeting in the rear room of the basement when there came a squeak from the janitor’s room. The members of the society acted variously. The unmarried members got on chairs.

“It’s a mouse,” they said.

The married members listened attentively.

“It’s a baby,” they asserted.

Leaving the unmarried members still on their chairs, the married members hurried to the janitor’s room. On the bed was a little white bundle. As they drew near the little squeak was repeated.

One of the women more bold than her sisters went to the bed and threw back a blanket. A baby blinked up at her.

The question arose what was to be done with the infant.

“Notify the police,” said the janitor.

But word went about the room:

“It’s a Greek Church baby, and the Greek Church should take care of its own.”

So the police were not notified. Instead, one of the members of the society took the baby home. Yesterday the society was about to meet to discuss what was to be the ultimate disposition of the baby when a policeman arrived. The janitor, possibly not relishing the idea of a church baby, had telephoned to the East Sixty-seventh Street Station.

The baby was taken to Bellevue.

“But we want it here,” said the members of the Ladies’ Aid Society.

“You can claim it at Bellevue,” the policeman told them.

So the members of the society haven’t given up the idea of adopting the church baby. To-day there will be a special meeting of the society, when steps looking to its adoption will be taken.

If you’re anything like me, you want to know the rest of this story — what happened to the baby? Did one of the Greek women adopt him? How did his life turn out? I haven’t yet found any other articles on this story, but beyond the newspapers, an obvious place to look is in the baptismal records of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church (now Cathedral). Presumably, if the baby was adopted by one of the parishioners, he would have been baptized sometime between this May 1, 1908 newspaper article and the end of 1908. As I said earlier, if any of our readers can help solve this mystery, email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Infant Abandoned in NY Greek Church in 1908 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

- Matthew Namee

WANTED: A professional metal restorer is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas

Editor’s note: The following article was written by relatives of Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas, and originally appeared in the 60th anniversary commemorative album for Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in San Francisco, published in 1996. The article has been reprinted at Annunciation Cathedral’s website, and we present it here courtesy of the San Francisco Bay Area Greek Historical Society. The Society has done outstanding work on the history of Greek Orthodoxy in the region, and its chairman, Jim Lucas, is building a virtual photo album which may be found at this link. The website includes special pages for Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas and St. Sophia/Annunciation Cathedral, where he served as a priest.

We originally ran this article here at OrthodoxHistory.org on August 9, 2010. However, today is the 77th anniversary of Fr. Pythagoras’ repose, and I thought it appropriate to reprint his biography.

Pythagoras Caravellas was born in 1890, in Greece, on the small island of Samos, off the coast of Asia Minor. He was the son of a tobacco and cotton merchant and the youngest of four children.

At the age of 16, he completed his pre-university education at the gymnasium in Karlovassi. His schoolmasters, impressed with the young man’s curiousity and studious inclinations, recommended him for further study at one of the Greek teaching monasteries.

The year that young Pythagoras was cloistered in the mountain monastery, he applied himself diligently to the assigned subjects, religion, science, and the humanities. Perhaps it was the humility with which the monks imparted their wisdom to the young scholars that influenced young Pythagoras to cherish learning. This inspiration was to follow him always.

While under the tutelage of the monks, the Metropolitan of Corfu, Alexander, paid a visit to the monastery. The hierarchy of the Greek Orthodox faith had always taken a personal interest in the education and development of their youth. Alexander was not an exception. A man of deep perception, he was to become the first Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church. If his visits to the monasteries were anticipated by the students, a few requested were granted private audiences. The topics that generated the most interest were students’ personal aspirations.

During one of his private conversations with the Metropolitan whom he had known since childhood, Pythagoras confessed his secret hope to continue his education in the United States and perhaps establish a permanent home there. Expecting a small admonishment or to be dissuaded from his ambition, Pythagoras was pleased with the unexpected approval his received. The full impact of this meeting was not to emerge for twelve years, but its immediate result was that Pythagoras entered the Seminary in Athens to study for the priesthood. After a year, he was uncertain as to the wisdom of his action and decided to enroll in the University of Athens.

During the next four years he earned his degree and received his teaching credentials. While attending the university, he made occasional visits to his family in Samos. He also found time to tutor students, work for a tobacconist and take additional courses in English.

In 1911, he made his big decision to go to the United States. He went to Middleboro, Massachusetts, where a small colony of Greeks had settled, to live with his two brothers, Nicholas and Theodore, who had immigrated there two years before. Convinced that their brother was not interested in their restaurant business, they encouraged him to enter Harvard University with an offer to help him financially.

Before leaving Greece, Pythagoras had already decided to become a physician. Realizing how many long years of study lay ahead, he preferred not to accept his brothers’ generous offer. He considered ways in which he would attend school, allow time for studies, and still be able to earn an adequate income necessary for his tuition and living expenses. He would rely on his knowledge of small business accounting to earn his living and soon had a number of shopkeepers and restaurants as clients.

After graduation from Harvard with a degree in medicine in June, 1917, he became engaged to Evangeline Constantine. They were married in November, 1917. His work as a hospital intern offered some degree of fulfillment, but he was restless.

Recalling his year at the monastery and his communications with Archbishop Alexander, Pythagoras sent a letter to the Metropolitan asking for his guidance. The sincere simplicity of the Archbishop’s reply and his words of encouragement to enter the church convinced Pythagoras to give up medicine and to complete his studies in the priesthood.

Through further correspondence with the Metropolitan, Pythagoras learned of the need for Greek priests in the western part of the United States. As waves of Greek immigrants moved westward across the United States, they were dependent upon a small group of itinerant Greek priests for infrequent church services and the administration of religious rites. More Greeks lived and worked in the western states than the number of churches would suggest.

In 1921, Father Pythagoras arrived in San Francisco. At this time, his wife and daughter Theofani (Faye) were living in Chicago and it would be months later before he had the money to bring them to San Francisco. Once more the question of earning a livlihood and attending school was of immediate concern. Through letters of introduction and recommendation, Pythagoras became an assistant professor of Greek at the University of California, and attended the Pacific School of Religion. He supplemented his income writing for the Greek newspaper and the Christian Science Monitor. Soon, Pythagoras and Evangeline became an integral part of the young Greek community. Their resourcefulness and command of English, attracted the older families. They were often called upon to act as witnesses or interpreters in matters concerning immigration or in matters of law affecting members of the community. The more affluent Greeks were enthusiastic with the qualifications of the young couple and gave their wholehearted support for the erection of a church which would have Pythagoras as its priest.

After his graduation from the Pacific School of Religion in 1927, Pythagoras was ordained into the priesthood of the Greek Orthodox religion by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Metaxakis, and Archbishop Alexander, both of who were visiting in San Francisco at the time. The colorful ceremony was held in the new, small white church of St. Sophia. The presence of these eminent prelates in San Francisco created much interest and served to establish the young church of St. Sophia as a unified and integrated religious community.

With the advent of the Russian revolution, the organizational work of the Russian Orthodox Church in America came to an abrupt halt. In the meantime, the royalist-liberal controversy in Greece had divided event the Greek immigrants in America. The church could nor or would not steer a neutral course in the civil war raging between the forces of King Constantine and Premier Venizelos. This partnership, which had its beginnings in 1916, was to shake the church communities of Greece and United States to their foundation. The reaction in the United States was violent.

Reorganization required a degree of cooperation difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, Father Pythagoras managed to steer his congregation away from the repercussions of the political battles in Greece and toward the establishment of a Greek-American community whose growth would be a blending of the cultural heritage of Greece and the democratic principles of their adopted country, America.

Since coming to San Francisco, Father Pythagoras’ family increased by two daughters, Helen and Joan. After his ordination, Father Pythagoras budgeted his family severely. Occasionally, his small salary was supplemented by farmers; gifts of produce, fruit, and fowl. His parish was a poor one, and living became more difficult during the depression when members of his congregation dwelt on the edge of poverty. He administered to their needs, with words of encouragement and guidance. He would officiate at services during his frequent visits to farming communities. He taught the children of the community Greek after their regular school hours. He found time to program social activities for the community in observation of national and religious holidays. He made his rounds at the hospitals giving communion to the sick, the injured, and the dying. He conducted services every Sunday, every Holy Day and in the Greek church this alone is a rigorous and demanding schedule.

In 1931, the physical strain had taken its toll. Father Pythagoras was will with tuberculosis. He was a patient for three years at the California Sanitorium in Belmont. During his confinement, he continued to read avidly and began work for his degree as a Doctor of Divinity. He looked forward to returning to his church and his congregation. In late 1934, the doctors told him that he was cured and that he would soon be going home. On December 6, 1934, he suffered a heart attack and died. He was mourned by Greeks throughout the nation and his body lay in state in the church of St. Sophia for 7 days to afford his many friends the sad privilege of a final farewell.

From Harvard MD to Orthodox priest: the Fr. Pythagoras Caravellas story is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Philip Sredanovich is one of the odder characters in American Orthodox history. Perhaps not as odd as the embellishing Agapius Honcharenko or the wandering Bulgarian Monk, but in all my studies, I’ve run across few parish priests stranger than Sredanovich.

Sredanovich was born in Montenegro in 1881. I read somewhere that he was educated in Russia, although I can’t seem to track down the precise source at the moment. (This is supported by the 1920 US Census, which says that Sredanovich’s wife was born in Russia.) He came to the US just after the turn of the 20th century; by 1906, he was pastor of St. Nicholas Serbian Church in Wilmerding, PA. A couple of years later, while serving in Butler, PA, he made his first newspaper headlines. From the Washington Post (12/11/1908):

The Rev. Philip Sredanovitch, pastor of the Greek Orthodox Church and editor of Justness, today announced a discovery, which, if it works out, will put Newton, Franklin, and Edison in the amateur class. The pastor-editor declares that he has invented a means by which the rotation of the earth on its axis may be taken advantage of in travel, and that by standing still one may go around the world in 24 hours.

He says he has found a way by which men may lift themselves above the earth to a point where they will stand still while the earth, rotating from west to east, will do their traveling for them. The secret is jealously guarded by the pastor and his wife, whom he credits with suggesting the idea. He asks $100,000 for the invention.

Sredanovich says: “We will hoist ourselves above the earth and await the coming of the desired place, then we will lower ourselves where we desire to be. In this way we may go from America to Europe in less than eighteen hours. My secret is how to stand above the earth and not be affected by the earth’s attraction.”

He says his invention makes it possible to get away from gravitation and still not be lose [sic] in space.

He does not say how one may get away from the swirling earth and take his stand in the ethereal world, but any one with $100,000 may find out. So far as is known, the pastor has invented no airships nor announced any scheme for climbing a sunbeam.

This has to be a joke, right? An educated clergyman couldn’t seriously think that you could circle the globe simply by “hoisting” yourself above the earth — could he?

Moving on… Sredanovich bounced around a lot. Here is an incomplete list of the places he served:

• Wilmerding, PA
• Butler, PA
• Kansas City, MO
• South Bend, IN
• Gary, IN
• Kansas City, MO (again)
• Butte, MT
• Milwaukee, WI
• Steelton, PA
• Johnstown, PA
• Butte, MT (again)

Of course, in Sredanovich’s day, it was quite common for priests to spend just a couple of years (or less) at one parish before moving on to the next. But Sredanovich’s travels seem to have been caused as much by his own personality as by the era in which he lived. In November 1920, he was “fired” from his post in Kansas City, responded with four successive lawsuits in the span of three months. In one suit, he asked for $25,000, charging that “church officials were instrumental in causing slanderous remarks to be printed against him” in a Serbian newspaper. A few days later, he filed another lawsuit, this time merely seeking $120 in back pay. (I don’t know the outcomes of these cases; my only source is the Kansas City Times, 1/25/1921.)

After leaving Kansas City, Sredanovich went to Butte, Montana, where he took over Holy Trinity Serbian Church. One day, in November of 1922, he was walking down the street when a group of teenage boys started to bother him. One picked up a rock, at which point Sredanovich took off for his house. He went inside, got his pistol, and returned to the street. The youths continued to taunt Sredanovich, who responded by shooting one of the boys in the foot. The injured 18-year-old was taken to the hospital, and Sredanovich was arrested and charged with second-degree assault. (Idaho Daily Statesman, 11/30/1922)

Sredanovich soon left Butte, but he returned to the parish in 1949, spending the last three years of his life there. He died in 1952, and is buried at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois.

This article was written by Matthew Namee.

In Search Of… Fr. Philip Sredanovich is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.