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This week in American Orthodox history (June 4-10)
011 months ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
Archbishop Iakovos receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Jimmy Carter, June 9, 1980.
June 10, 1870: The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church created the Diocese of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. Previously, Alaska — or, before its 1867 sale to the United States, “Russian America” — was part of the Diocese of Kamchatka.
Making Alaska its own diocese was part of the transition in the wake of the 1867 sale. Four weeks later, Bishop John Mitropolsky was consecrated to head the new Alaskan diocese, but he actually set up his headquarters in San Francisco — outside of the official diocesan territory.
June 8, 1891: After three years of unceasing scandal, the Russian Holy Synod removed Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky and reassigned him to a see in Russia. He was replaced by Bishop Nicholas Ziorov, who stabilized the diocese and oversaw its expansion throughout the United States.
June 4, 1896: Mikhail Borisovitch Maximovitch was born in the province of Kharkov, in what is now Ukraine. He went on to become the great Archbishop John, serving as a ROCOR bishop in Shanghai, Western Europe, and finally San Francisco. He was canonized in 1994.
June 5, 1901: Fr. Misael Karydis, pastor of Holy Trinity Church in New Orleans, committed suicide in a New York hotel. In December 2009, I wrote a pair of articles on this tragic (and mysterious) incident; click HERE and HERE to read them.
Fr. Misael was born in Bulgaria in October 1847. He came to New Orleans in 1880 or ’81, and was the priest there for 20 years. Those 20 years witnessed tremendous changes in American Orthodoxy. When Fr. Misael arrived, his New Orleans parish was one of just three Orthodox communities in the contiguous United States (San Francisco and New York being the other two). His parish was under the Church of Greece, although the extent of that relationship, and Fr. Misael’s own ecclesiastical affiliation, are unclear.
It’s hard to get a good handle on the sort of person Fr. Misael was. We know that, in 1888, he got into a fistfight with a Greek newspaper reporter. In the days following his death, reports surfaced that he was a reclusive inventor, obsessed with building a flying machine (this was two years before the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk). More darkly, there are suggestions that he may have abused children.
Why he committed suicide in New York, rather than New Orleans, is not really clear. Apparently, he left New Orleans after receiving word that his father had died in Bulgaria. Arriving in New York, he met with Greek consul Demetrius Botassi, checked into a hotel under a false name, ate dinner, and then shot himself. He lingered for a bit before dying, but wouldn’t talk to anyone.
The whole thing is really mysterious, and if you want to learn more, check out the two articles I linked to above.
June 8, 1907: Bishop Platon Rozhdestvensky was elevated to Archbishop and assigned to replace St. Tikhon as primate of the Russian Archdiocese in America. Platon served in America until 1914, when he was reassigned to a prominent see in the Russian Empire. He returned to America in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War.
June 6, 1926: Fr. Arseny Chahovtsov was consecrated in Belgrade, Serbia to be the Bishop of Winnipeg, Canada. This was at a time when the Russian Metropolia was a part of ROCOR, and the consecration itself was presided over by ROCOR’s First Hierarch, Metropolitan Antonii Khrapovitskii. It also had the blessings of the Serbian Patriarch and Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestevsky of the Metropolia.
June 10, 1926: Fr. Moses Abihider died. He had immigrated to America in 1908 and served as a priest under St. Raphael Hawaweeny in the Syro-Arab Mission. For the great majority of his career, he was assigned to Springfield, MA.
The Abihiders had a stunning 17 children, of whom at least nine survived to adulthood. According to one anecdote related by a relative of the Abihider family, a suitor came to seek the hand of one of the Abihider girls. Fr. Moses interrogated the man, and, satisfied of his worthiness, told the daughter, “Come meet your husband. Get ready; you will be married next Saturday.”
Fr. Moses must have been close friends with Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, because one of his sons was named Aftimios and had the archbishop as his godfather. In 1999, Aftimios Abihider was the publisher of the biography of Aftimios Ofiesh, written by Ofiesh’s widow Miriam.
Fr. Moses is perhaps best known for being featured on the tombstone of St. Raphael. He is one of six clergymen listed along with the great bishop, and all were at one time buried together at Brooklyn’s Mount Olivet Cemetery. However, in 1988, the remains of St. Raphael and two of the others (Bishops Emmanuel Abo-Hatab and Sophronios Beshara) were transferred, along with the tombstone, to the Antiochian Village in Pennsylvania. It seems most likely that Fr. Moses’ remains are still at Mount Olivet.
June 10, 1927: Fr. Panagiotis Phiambolis, one of the first Greek Orthodox priests in America, died in St. Louis at the age of 87. A married priest, he came to America in 1892 to become the first pastor of the first Orthodox church in Chicago. Later, he served in Boston and then St. Louis, where he remained for the rest of his life. While in St. Louis, his parish split in 1910 and then reunited in 1917. Fr. Panagiotis retired the following year, at age 78. His daughter Helen Jannopoulo went on to become an accomplished author, and her book And Across Big Seas recounts events from her own life, including a lot of details on the family’s move from Greece to Chicago.
June 10, 1931: The future Antiochian Metropolitan Philip Saliba was born.
June 9, 1980: President Jimmy Carter awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Archbishop Iakovos Coucouzis, primate of the Greek Archdiocese. The medal is now on display as part of the Archbishop Iakovos Collection at Hellenic College in Brookline, MA. President Carter made these remarks when giving Iakovos the award:
One of the most exciting days of my Presidency was a year or so ago when we had this entire lawn almost filled with delighted Greek Americans who share with me and others the admiration that we all feel for the next honoree. I’d like to ask Archbishop Iakovos to come forward.
Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos has long put into practice what he has preached. As a progressive religious leader concerned with human rights and the ecumenical movement, he has marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and has met with the Pope. As the Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America concerned with his congregation, he has given guidance to millions.
This week in American Orthodox history (May 28-June 3)
011 months ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
This week’s article is embarrassingly short — so short that I don’t think it actually qualifies as an “article.” I’ve just been pulled in all directions lately, and haven’t been able to give this site the time I’d like. We’ve got several fascinating article in the pipeline, though, including pieces from Nicholas Chapman and Deacon Andrei Psarev. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, take advantage of our site’s search function to look up past articles on some of the intriguing figures featured in this week’s post, such as Frs. Stephen Hatherly, Misael Karydis, Kyrill Johnson, and Patrick Mythen.
June 1, 1884:Fr. Stephen Hatherly, a visiting convert priest from England, celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Philadelphia. Twelve people attended.
May 30, 1886: Fr. Misael Karydis of New Orleans celebrated the first documented Divine Liturgy in Chicago.
June 3, 1897: Arthur Warren Johnson was born in Roxbury, MA. After graduating from college, Johnson converted to Orthodoxy and was ordained a priest, taking the name Fr. Kyrill.
June 3, 1902: The widowed priest Platon Rozhdestvensky was consecrated an auxiliary bishop for the Diocese of Kiev. Five years later, he replaced St. Tikhon as Archbishop of North America.
June 1, 1923: Fr. Philaret Ioannides was consecrated Bishop of Chicago for the Greek Archdiocese.
May 28, 1924: Archimandrite Patrick Mythen, who had converted to Orthodoxy just a few years earlier and had quickly risen to a position of influence in the Russian Archdiocese, formally requested re-admission to the Roman Catholic Church.
June 2, 1927: Archbishop Apollinary Koshevoy, of the Russian Metropolia, joined ROCOR and founded the future Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco.
May 30, 1933: Bishop Emmanuel Abo-Hatab, head of the “Russy” faction of Syrians (that is, the Syrians who recognized the authority of the Russian hierarchy), died.
June 1, 1933: Bishop Emmanuel’s funeral took place in Brooklyn. Ironically, the chief officiant was Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi, the former leader of the rival “Antacky” faction.
May 28, 1934: St. John Maximovitch, the future ROCOR Archbishop of San Francisco, was consecrated a bishop.
May 28, 1959: Bishop John Zlobin of Alaska, a hierarch of the Russian Metropolia, died.
May 29, 1959: Fr. Michael Andreades died. Originally, Andreades had been one of a small handful of Greek priests who served in the Russian Archdiocese. Later, he joined the Greek Archdiocese.
May 30, 1989: OCA Archbishop John Shahovsky died.
May 31, 1992: Fr. Basil Essey was consecrated a bishop for the Antiochian Archdiocese. In addition to his duties as Bishop of Wichita, he now serves as the secretary of our Assembly of Bishops.
May 29, 2000: Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny was formally glorified as a saint in a ceremony at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, PA.
May 28, 2010: The first meeting of the Assembly of Bishops closed, and the hierarchs issued a joint statement.
This week in American Orthodox history (May 21-27)
01 year ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
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.
Met. Leonty: A Life in Moments
01 year ago
As Matthew pointed out in his post yesterday, this week marks the 47th anniversary of the death of one of the truly great Orthodox churchmen of the 20th century, Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich. With an ecclesiastical career in the United States spanning from 1906 to 1965, there are few figures in the history of Orthodoxy in America who can claim such longevity, much less a comparable length of time spent at the heights of church administration. From his first assignment in America, as Dean of the North American Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to his last, as Metropolitan of All-America and Canada of what was then the Russian Metropolia, Leonty served as a key figure in nearly every moment and institution of note for nearly six decades.
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.
This week in American Orthodox history (May 14-20)
01 year ago
by Matthew Namee
in Uncategorized
May 17, 1870: The newly ordained convert priest Fr. Nicholas Bjerring celebrated his first Divine Liturgy in St. Petersburg, Russia. He didn’t know Church Slavonic, so he served in German.
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.
