Back in 2009, I wrote an article about a unique Independence Day church service held in Chicago by Fr. Firmilian Drazich of Serbia. I thought it’d be appropriate to link to it today. If anyone out there has more information about this fascinating event, please email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Matthew Namee

Independence Day in Chicago, 1892 is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

In the comments section of an old article I wrote on the first Orthodox parishes in each US state, Isa Almisry and I have recently had an interesting exchange about an Old Catholic parish in Wisconsin which discussed joining (and possibly did briefly join) the Russian Orthodox Church in 1891-92. This story involves Joseph Rene Vilatte, a former Roman Catholic priest who went on to become a prolific vagante bishop and who would reappear in American Orthodox history over the coming decades.

I don’t really have the expertise to outline the history of the Old Catholic movement, but suffice it to say that, in the latter half of the 19th century (and especially after the first Vatican Council in 1870, which promulgated the dogma of papal infallibility), a number of Roman Catholics broke away from their church.

Joseph Rene Vilatte was born in Paris in 1854. Originally, he was a Roman Catholic, but he became the quintessential religious chameleon as an adult. In the 1880s he came to the United States, where he served as a Presbyterian missionary in a Belgian Old Catholic community in Green Bay, Wisconsin. While there, he made contact with local Episcopal Bishop John Brown of Fond du Lac, who in turn recommended to the Old Catholic Bishop Edward Herzog of Bern, Switzerland that Vilatte be ordained a priest. This took place in 1886.

Soon, Bishop Brown died, and the new Episcopal bishop of Fond du Lac, Charles Grafton (the future friend of St. Tikhon), did not see eye to eye with Vilatte. Forced to make a choice between Episcopalianism and Old Catholicism, Vilatte chose the latter, and he tried to have himself consecrated a bishop in the Old Catholic Church. The church authorities in Europe declined. This is where our story begins. [Incidentally, this preliminary information on Vilatte comes from Theodore Natsoulas, "Patriarch McGuire and the Spread of the African Orthodox Church to Africa, Journal of Religion in Africa 12:2 (1981), 81-104. This is one of the only scholarly sources which discusses Vilatte at any length.]

Vilatte wanted to be consecrated a bishop, and he wanted as much autonomy as possible. That is the first thing to understand. In the paper cited above, Theodore Natsoulas says that the Old Catholics turned down Vilatte because he was “unpredictable,” and they did not want him to be their sole representative in America. Here is how Natsoulas describes what happened next:

[Vilatte's] attempts to be raised to the episcopate included approaches to the Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in America and to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Green Bay. Both turned him down, although Vladimir, the Russian Bishop, in order to incorporate the Old Catholics within his fold, did extend some form of recognition and protection to Vilatte and the Old Catholic Church. Vladimir and Vilatte, however, could not arrive at a mutually satisfactory agreement.

It all began when Vilatte traveled to San Francisco to meet with Bishop Vladimir, sometime in 1890 or early 1891. Interestingly, this coincided almost precisely with the visit of a delegation of Uniates from St. Alexis Toth’s parish in Minneapolis. It must have been amazing for Bishop Vladimir, sitting there in San Francisco, to receive near-simultaneous unsolicited visits from two Upper Midwest groups connected to Roman Catholicism and seeking reception into the Orthodox Church.

Bishop Vladimir traveled to Minneapolis in March of 1891 and formally received the Minneapolis parish into Orthodoxy. After that historic visit, Vladimir passed through Chicago, which had a sizeable Orthodox community which was determined to remain independent of the controversial Bishop Vladimir. He left Chicago on April 10, and by April 11 he was in Green Bay. The Milwaukee Sentinel reported the next day that Vladimir came for the purpose of visiting Vilatte and his Old Catholic parish in nearby Dyckesville. The Russian bishop “expressed great sympathy with [Vilatte's] work, and it is stated that he was agreeably surprised to find that the doctrinal basis of the Old Catholics at this place, and that of his own large church of 100,000,000 souls were precisely identical.”

But what, exactly, was the relationship between the Russian Diocese and the Old Catholics in Wisconsin? According to a web-published biography of Vilatte by Bertil Persson (the reliability of which is unclear), Vilatte had originally visited Bishop Vladimir in San Francisco in January 1891, at which time Vladimir “approached The Holy Synod of The Russian Orthodox Church suggesting that Vilatte should be consecrated.” I don’t doubt that Bishop Vladimir notified the Holy Synod of Vilatte’s visit, but I cannot believe that he actually suggested that the Russian Church consecrate the man.

Also according to the Persson biography, after visiting Vilatte’s parish in April, Bishop Vladimir issued the following certificate:

CERTIFICATE. The Russian Ecclesiastical Consistory of Alaska, San Francisco, Cal: May 9, 1891. By the Grace of God and the Authority bestowed on me by the Apostolic Succession, I, VLADIMIR, Bishop of the Orthodox Catholic Church, announce to all clergymen of the different Christian denominations and to all Old Catholics that The Reverend Joseph René Vilatte, Superior of the Old Catholic Parish in Dyckesville, Wisc:, is now a true Old Catholic Orthodox Christian, under the patronage of our Church, and no Bishop or Priest of any denomination has the right to interdict him or to suspend his religious duties, except the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, and myself. Any action contrary to this declaration, is null and void on the basis of liberty of conscience and the law of this country. ‡VLADIMIR, Bishop of the Greco-Russian Orthodox Ch.

I have no idea whether this document is authentic or not, and unfortunately, Persson only reprinted the text, so we can’t examine the letterhead or Bishop Vladimir’s signature.

Anyway, Bishop Vladimir was recalled to Russia soon after all this, in the wake of a series of scandals in his San Francisco cathedral. His replacement, Bishop Nicholas Ziorov, visited the Wisconsin Old Catholics in May 1892. According to Dom Augustine de Angelis in the Fond Du Lac Reporter (quoted in the Milwaukee Sentinel, 5/16/1892), “Bishop Nicholas, head of the Greek church in America, visited the Old Catholic mission at Dyckesville, last Monday. He has been in America only a month and a half, but has already made his episcopal visitation of the Orthodox and Old Catholic churches, preparatory to his annual visitation of the vast region of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. [...] His first impressions of America and Americans are very favorable, and he sympathizes with us in our hopes of seeing an Orthodox American church, in which mass shall be said in English, French, German, etc., until all have become so American that English shall be the common tongue of all…”

But the parish priest, Vilatte, wasn’t there. He was in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), awaiting his long-sought consecration to the episcopate. He had found a taker in the ancient Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the non-Chalcedonian church in India. Vilatte never seems to have considered himself to be a Malankara Syrian Orthodox; he was interested in their apostolic succession, not their actual Church. (As Theodore Natsoulas puts it, “Vilatte’s commitment to the [Malankara] Church of Antioch, or, in fact, to any other religious organization, never was very deep.”) He returned to Dyckesville in August, and on September 11, the New York Times reported that Vilatte had created the American Catholic Church. Needless to say, any connection he might have had with the Russian Diocese of the Aleutian Islands was dead by this point.

Vilatte went on to an exceedingly colorful career as a vagante bishop, and many little Old Catholic and pseudo-Orthodox groups have websites claiming “apostolic succession” through him. More importantly for our purposes, Vilatte remained in occasional contact with Orthodoxy. Robert Josias Morgan — soon to become Fr. Raphael, the first black Orthodox priest in America — was briefly a deacon in Vilatte’s church in the early 1900s. And many years later, in 1921, Vilatte consecrated George Alexander McGuire, who immediately formed the “African Orthodox Church.”

Was Vilatte’s Old Catholic parish once a part of the Russian Orthodox Church? Even if we assume that the purported certificate from Bishop Vladimir is authentic, I’m really not sure. Bishop Vladimir may have viewed St. Alexis Toth and Joseph Rene Vilatte as parallel church leaders, and he may have imagined that, just as Toth began a flood of Uniate conversions to Orthodoxy, so too Vilatte would be the first of thousands of Old Catholics to join the Russian Mission. But from Vilatte’s perspective, this whole idea would have been laughable. He was, it seems, utterly committed to becoming a vagante bishop. He wanted a mechanical, legalistic “apostolic succession,” and then he wanted to be left to his own devices. There is simply no way that he, or his Wisconsin parish, could have been effectively incorporated into the Russian Mission.

Much of this story remains a mystery, but at this juncture, I am most struck by the contrast between Toth and Vilatte, both of whom, in their own very different ways, made substantial impacts on the religious life of the United States in the decades that followed.

[This article was written by Matthew Namee.]

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I’ve recently stumbled onto a really interesting article on the history of Chicago’s Serbian community. This paper, written by Krinka Vidaković Petrov, was published in the journal Serbian Studies in 2006. It helps shed further light on the early history of Orthodoxy in Chicago, which we’ve discussed many times on this website. I found this paragraph to be especially enlightening:

The Metropolitan of Belgrade Mihailo sent archimandrite Firmilian Dražić to Chicago in 1892. He did so in response to a letter by Krsto Gopčević, who had addressed the Metropolitan on behalf of the Greek-Russian-Serbian Orthodox parish established in Chicago in 1891. Gopčević suggested that the Metropolitan send a priest who could speak Serbian, Greek and also “a little Arabic, since there are quite a few Syrians here.” Services in this parish were conducted in a small chapel improvised in a private home since the parishioners struggled to provide enough financing from their small community. Archimandrite Dražić returned to Belgrade six months later. After his departure from America, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade was not in a position either to send a permanent priest or to provide financial support for this parish, which was unable to provide funds for its own survival. Even though the parish was extinguished, its short-lived efforts were an indication of the Chicago Serbs’ need to get organized in order to be able to fulfill their religious needs.

Of course, we’ve heard about both Mr. Gopčević (or Gopchevich) and Fr. Firmilian Dražić (Drazich) in the past. I would be very curious to know whether there was an actual Serbian parish in Chicago in 1892, as Petrov suggests, or whether Fr. Firmilian merely made an extended visit to the city.

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According to some sources, Archimandrite Kallinikos Kanellas was the first ethnic Greek priest to serve in America. And those sources may be right, depending on your definition of “Greek.” The only other candidates would be from the Greek church in New Orleans. Fr. Stephen Andreades was the priest in the late 1860s, and Fr. Gregory Yayas served there from 1872-74; considering their names, both were almost certainly Greeks of one sort or another. Archimandrite Misael Karydis (or Kalitski) was the priest from 1881-1901, but he was reportedly from Bulgaria. In any event, Kanellas was one of the very first Greek priests in America.

I don’t know anything about Kanellas’ early life. I do know that, before he came to the United States, Kanellas had spent some time in India. From 1880 to 1886, he was the rector of the Greek church in Calcutta (the origins of which dated to the 1700s; see this fascinating history for more information). He first shows up in the US in 1889, as one of the priests of the Russian cathedral in San Francisco. He seems to be the first of several non-Russian priests brought over to America to serve in the Russian Diocese — “client clergy,” as Fr. John Erickson has called them. Soon, he would be followed by people like Fr. Ambrose Vretta, Fr. Theoklytos Triantafilides, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, Fr. Raphael Hawaweeny, and Fr. Michael Andreades. But Kanellas seems to have been the original.

I’m not sure what Kanellas was doing from 1886 to 1889, but I suspect he might have been in Russia. This would explain his connection to the Russian Diocese in America.

Kanellas appears to have been trusted by Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky, who appointed him to serve on the Alaskan Spiritual Consistory, the group of clergy which ran many of the day-to-day affairs of the diocese. He was particularly useful in ministering to ethnic Greeks. In 1891, he made a cross-country missionary trip. He stopped in Savannah, Georgia, and baptized a Greek child. The Columbus Enquirer-Sun (6/24/1891) reported that the child’s father spent $650, which presumably included transportation and lodging costs. The paper said that the amount “includes a handsome fee.” $650 seems outrageous, though. I checked an online inflation calculator, and it estimated that $650 in 1891 is equivalent to over $15,000 in 2008.

From Savannah, Kanellas went to New York City, where he baptized the daughter of Anthony Ralli (who was possibly connected with the well-known Ralli Brothers merchant firm). The New York Sun (6/26/1891) said that Kanellas had a “patriarchal beard and jewelled gown.”  According to one account, he actually had to bring his own baptismal font — can you imagine taking one of those on a train?

I’ve seen some references to Kanellas having served in Chicago. That’s a bit of a puzzler… In July 1891, the Chicago Inter Ocean (7/11/1891) reported that a certain Archimandrite Lininas, “who presides over a temple in San Francisco,” was visiting Chicago and holding services for the Orthodox there. I haven’t been able to find evidence of this Fr. Lininas being in San Francisco, and it’s very possible that this was actually Kanellas, on his way back from New York to California. However, the Inter Ocean says that Fr. Lininas “is a finely educated gentleman, speaking German, Russian, and French fluently, but his English is best understood through an interpreter.” So according to the paper, he didn’t speak Greek (which, if true, means he wasn’t Kanellas).

In 1892, amid much turmoil and scandal, Bp Vladimir was recalled to Russia and replaced with Bishop Nicholas Ziorov. On July 1 (June 19 Old Style), the members of the Spiritual Consistory (of which Kanellas was apparently no longer a member) wrote to the new bishop,

Today, the Archimandrite Kallinikos was informed that he has to leave the Mission as of July 1. He replied that he has nowhere to go. In accordance with Your Grace’s will, we deemed it was better to say nothing in reply: Your Grace has ordered not to drive him out.

Obviously, something was up, but I don’t know what. The 1893 San Francisco city directory  doesn’t list Kanellas among the cathedral clergy, so he didn’t stick around much longer. And for the next 18 years, I can’t figure out he was. I’m pretty sure he stayed in America, and by at least 1911 (and probably earlier), he was pastor of the Greek church in Birmingham, Alabama. In the 1913 book Greeks in America, Thomas Burgess, writing about the Birmingham church, said,

Of its former pastor, says the “Greek-American Guide,” “The Rev. Arch. Kallinikos Kanellas is a very sympathetic and reverend old man of whom it is possible to say that of the Greek clergy in America he is the most—shall we say ‘disinterested’? The Greek word is a dandy, (literally, ‘not loving of riches’). Plutarch used to use that word.

In 1913, Kanellas moved to Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. He spent the rest of his life there. This is from Annunciation’s parish history:

Father Kallinikos Kanellas was brought to Little Rock on a permanent basis in 1913, and services were held in an upstairs meeting hall near 9th and Main Streets for the next eight years. This hall included a small chapel for Liturgies and Sacraments such as weddings, baptisms, etc., as well as a place for social gatherings. Incidentally, research indicates that Father Kanellas probably was the first Orthodox priest of Greek ancestry to come to the United States. When Father Kanellas became seriously ill, young Theo Polychron visited him daily, bringing soup from his little café. Father died in 1921 and is buried at Oakland Cemetery where most of the early Greek immigrants were also interred.

As  you can see, Kanellas’ story has a lot of missing pieces. I suspect a lot of the gaps could be closed by a letter Kanellas wrote to Archbishop Meletios Metaxakis on March 16, 1918, in which he gave an account of his career in both the Russian Diocese and the Greek communities in America. That letter appears on page 333 of Paul Manolis’ History of the Greek Church in America in Acts and Documents… unfortunately, though, I can’t read Greek, so for now, I don’t know what the letter says. If any of you out there can read Greek and are interested in Kanellas, email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fr. Kallinikos Kanellas: the first Greek priest in America? is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

Fr. Sebastian Dabovich oversaw the foundation of the first Orthodox place of worship in Portland, Oregon.

Orthodoxy has been in Portland, Oregon for well over a century, and its history is of particular interest to me, as my in-laws live in the city, and I have visited there many times. Today, we’re going to look at the beginnings of organized parish life in Portland.

According to Brigit Farley, there are records of some sort of Orthodox religious activity in Portland dating to at least 1881. That year, Fr. Vladimir Vechtomov, the rector of the San Francisco cathedral, visited Portland to bury a Russian woman. That said, organized church life didn’t begin until the 1890s. In November of 1892, 29-year-old Fr. Sebastian Dabovich baptized two Greek children, in what the Oregonian (11/7/1892) called “the first ceremony of the kind that ever took place in this city.” The service was held in the St. Charles Hotel, the first brick hotel in all of Portland. The paper went on,

The Greek colony in this city only comprises about 20 members, but they are very active in church matters. They are at present contemplating the building of a church on the East side, and have purchased half a block of land at Twentieth and East Morrison streets. The structure will cost $5000, of which $1000 has already been raised. The Russian government contributes about $400,000 annually to the support of the Greek church in North America, and part of this fund will be available for the construction of a church in Portland. The bishop, of San Francisco, will furnish the chancel, pictures and other fixtures for the church, and will be present at the laying of the cornerstone.

I’m not sure how many actual Orthodox Christians were in Portland. The article says that the city’s Greek colony had only 20 people, but there were surely Orthodox of other nationalities, and there were also Greeks in neighboring communities. In fact, I’ve found evidence that at least one member of the Dabovich family was living in Portland at the time. In any event, Fr. Sebastian was convinced that Portland was the right place for an Orthodox chapel.

In March of 1894, Bishop Nicholas Ziorov, accompanied by Dabovich and Fr. Alexander Pustynsky, paid a visit to Portland. It was his first stop in the city, but he actually wasn’t the first Orthodox bishop to set foot in Portland. In 1890, Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky had spent a night in Portland while en route from Alaska to San Francisco, but there’s no evidence that he interacted with the small Orthodox population of the city.

Anyway, Bp Nicholas made another visit in June, on his way to Seattle. Then, in July and August, Fr. Sebastian Dabovich spent three weeks in Portland, raising money for the chapel. Instrumental in this was an Alaskan Creole named Chernov, who was living in the city and apparently had some means. By August 15, construction had begun at East 20th and Morrison. The chapel’s name would be “Holy Trinity Greek Russian Mission.” Dabovich was telling the locals not just that it was an Orthodox chapel, but that it was a part of the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”

With things going smoothly in Portland, Dabovich then left for Seattle, where he hoped to replicate his success. The pattern repeated itself the following spring: Dabovich visited Portland to dedicate the new chapel in March, and then traveled to Seattle to perform the same service. The two communities, Portland and Seattle, would be closely linked years to come. The Russian diocese never assigned a priest to the Portland chapel, so it operated as a sort of dependency of St. Spiridon Church in Seattle.

It’s often said that the current OCA parish in Portland, St. Nicholas, is identical with this original Holy Trinity chapel, which was founded in the 1890s. This isn’t really accurate… By the early 1900s, the original chapel had fallen into disrepair, and the Greeks organized their own parish in 1908. There wouldn’t be a Russian church in the city until 1927, when St. Nicholas Church was founded.

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Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chicago, 1906

Sometimes, we historians deal with big, important issues. Other times, we obsess over minutae. Today is one of the latter occasions.

Chicago’s OCA cathedral, known for the past century as Holy Trinity, had a lot of names in its early years. It’s a pretty convoluted history, and I am attempting to unravel it. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

The parish was formally founded as St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church on May 18, 1892, and it was originally located at #20 North Peoria. By the next spring, the church had moved to #13 South Center Avenue, and in May, we find the first reference to the parish as St. Vladimir Russian Orthodox Church. It’s possible that the name was changed along with the location.

Most of the time, the newspapers didn’t bother to refer to the parish name at all, instead just calling it the “Russian Church,” or something like that. But it was clearly just “St. Vladimir” into 1895. Then, on November 23, a new name appears: St. Ivan Russian Orthodox Church.

But the parish didn’t just become “St. Ivan.” In the years that followed, both names were used in the newspapers. “St. Vladimir” tends to be the dominant name, but “St. Ivan” pops up a number of times as well. It’s a bit of a mystery. The priest of the church was, of course, Fr. John (Ivan) Kochurov, so it’s possible that his own name got mixed up with that of the parish. But “St. Ivan” appeared numerous times, in multiple newspapers, over a period of several years, so it hardly seems like a simple error. Perhaps some of our readers associated with Holy Trinity Cathedral could shed some light on this.

In any event, in 1902, the parish broke ground for a new cathedral on Leavitt Street. While the new structure was being built, the community continued to be called, “St. Vladimir,” but once the move was complete, the name was changed one final time, to Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral.

Another interesting wrinkle is the persistence of the original name, ”St. Nicholas.” While the parish was never called that after 1892 or so, the it did have a “Brotherhood of St. Nicholas.” I’ve found references to this brotherhood in 1899 and again in 1902, but I don’t know exactly what its function was.

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Bishop Vladimir Sokolovsky visited Chicago in 1888 and again in 1891, but was unable to start a parish.

Back in June, I did one of my first podcasts on an attempt, in 1888, to form a multiethnic parish in Chicago. Here are the basics:

By 1888, there were about a thousand Orthodox Christians living in Chicago, most of them Greeks and Serbs / Montenegrins. A few years earlier, they had organized themselves into an Orthodox society and petitioned the Church of Russia to send a priest and form a parish. There actually was no Russian bishop in America for much of the 1880s, so it wasn’t until Bishop Vladimir’s arrival in 1888 that the Chicago community got some attention from the hierarchy. In May, Vladimir wrote to the lay leaders in Chicago and asked them to call a meeting to determine just how many people were interested in starting a church, and just how much money they might be able to contribute. One of the highlights of the meeting was a speech by Greek leader George Brown, who said, “We will surprise the Americans. Let us stick like a brothers.” Bishop Vladimir himself came to Chicago in October, serving the first known Orthodox liturgy in the city, at No. 85 Fifth Avenue.

For some reason, despite the promise of the May 1888 meeting, no parish was formed. The reasons for this failure aren’t clear. A few years later, the Chicago Inter Ocean (7/11/1891) reported,

An effort was made some time ago to organize here to build a church or temple, as there are fully 2,000 of the faith residing here, but under the name of the Grecian Brotherhood Association it failed, as the Russians, Servians, and Slavonians would not come in under that title.

The Inter Ocean goes on to explain that, in June 1891 (so, three years after the initial meeting), a new organization was created, called the “Grecian, Slavonian, and Russian Orthodox Association.” This seems to have happened in conjunction with another visit by Bishop Vladimir to Chicago that spring. Hierarchical services were celebrated in Gazzolo’s Hall, at 82 West Madison Street. From the Chicago Tribune (6/1/1891):

Before the service a meeting had been held, at which it was decided to make application to the Holy Synod [...] for license to organize a church. The synod must consent to this before a church can organize. [...] There is little doubt that the license will be granted.

A nine-man committee was appointed to obtain the necessary signatures, and it wisely included three Russians, three Greeks, and three Serbs. Everyone hoped that the parish could be founded in time for the World’s Fair, which would be held in Chicago in 1893.

A couple months later, in July, an Archimandrite Lininas, from the Russian Cathedral in San Francisco, made a follow-up visit to Chicago. The aforementioned George Brown, one of the Greek leaders of the society, told a newspaper that the community had been promised a priest “as soon as they have erected a church.” I must say, it’s an odd approach, requiring the laity to construct a building before giving them a priest.

No building was erected, and no priest was sent. Throughout most of his episcopate in America, Bishop Vladimir was embroiled in a horrific scandal in San Francisco. Early on, his cathedral was burned to the ground (and some whispered that it was arson). Rumors swirled that funds had been embezzled. The accusations against Vladimir himself were the worst — he was charged by his detractors with sexually assaulting numerous young boys. To this day, it’s not clear whether these accusations were true or false.

More to the point of this story, the scandals in San Francisco had major ripple effects in Chicago. A Montenegrin named Gopchevich was one of the key players in the Chicago Orthodox community, and his brother happened to be one of Bishop Vladimir’s mortal enemies in San Francisco. In the fall of 1891, the Orthodox society met to discuss the crisis. From the Inter Ocean (11/2/1891):

Personal opinions vary. However, Bishop Vladimir had intended to establish the church here, but the local society has determined to remain entirely independent of Vladimir, and has sent a petition to the Russian Government and to the head of the Greek Church in Constantinople for a priest.

As it happened, Bishop Vladimir was on his way out, replaced by Bishop Nicholas Ziorov. In March of 1892, the new bishop and his entourage passed through Chicago on their way to San Francisco. Some of the leading Chicago Orthodox figures met with the group, and there was again talk of forming a multiethnic parish. But the very next month, Fr. Panagiotis Peter Phiambolis came to Chicago under the authority of Athens, and he founded a Greek church. The next month, Fr. Ambrose Vretta was sent by the Russian authorities to establish a Russian church.

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Fr. Ambrose Vretta, 1895

In the past, I’ve mentioned the Russian Mission’s practice of employing “client clergy” — non-Russian priests with ties to Russia, who served multiethnic or non-Russian parishes in America. St. Raphael and Fr. Sebastian Dabovich are perhaps the most famous examples, but there were many more. One of the earliest of these client clergy was Fr. Ambrose Vretta, who has the distinction of being the first pastor of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chicago and St. Spiridon’s Cathedral in Seattle.

Vretta (or Wretta) was originally from Macedonia. He was born in 1859, attended the Imperial Medical College in Istanbul, and then toured Europe and studied in Rome. He then returned to his homeland, but, according to the Chicago Tribune (9/2/1895), “he found the systematic persecution to which he was subjected by the Turkish Government too much for comfort.” So he left for Orthodox Russia, where he was warmly received. It wasn’t long before he had developed close ties with the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg (probably Metropolitan Isidore). At some point along the way he was ordained a priest; I assume this happened in Russia, but I can’t be sure. Vretta may have encountered a young Jovan (later Fr. Sebastian) Dabovich, who studied in St. Petersburg in the late 1880s.

When the newly-consecrated Bishop Nicholas Ziorov was assigned to America in 1892, the 33-year-old Vretta came along with him. His first assignment was Chicago, where a significant Orthodox community existed. For several years, the Orthodox of the city had been trying to organize a parish, but for various reasons, they hadn’t been successful. (We’ve discussed that a bit in the past, and will talk about it in great detail in the near future.)

On May 17, 1892, the first Russian Orthodox church was founded in Chicago (although, it should be noted, there were hardly any actual Russians, with much of the congregation being Serbian). This came only weeks after the first Greek parish was organized in the city. Vretta was present at that initial meeting, and he remained at the parish for the next three years. During that time, he also assumed responsibility for a new Orthodox parish in Streator, Illinois.

One of the most notable aspects of Vretta’s tenure in Chicago was the warm relationship between the Russian and Greek churches: although the Orthodox community of the city had split into two parishes, there doesn’t seem to have been any rivalry. Vretta concelebrated with the Greek priest, Fr. Panagiotis Peter Phiambolis, on numerous occasions. When the Greek Archbishop Dionysius of Zante visited Chicago for the World’s Fair, the Vretta went over to the Greek church for services. When the Russian Bishop Nicholas came to town, it was Phiambolis’ turn to visit the Russian church. In 1894, a special service was held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Orthodoxy in North America, and both Vretta and Phiambolis were present. Later that year, Tsar Alexander III died, and for the memorial, Vretta went over to the Greek church, which was simultaneously dedicating its new building.

Vretta was transferred to Seattle shortly after that, in November 1895. Up to that point, the fledgling Orthodox community of Seattle had never had a resident priest. Fr. Sebastian Dabovich had been holding services on Saturdays, but Vretta was the first full-time pastor of the new St. Spiridon’s Church. He didn’t confine himself to working in Seattle, though. In the spring of 1896, Vretta and his young reader Vladimir Alexandrov traveled to Montana, where they celebrated the first-ever Orthodox services in the state. In her fascinating paper, “Circuit Riders to the Slavs and Greeks”, Brigit Farley tells this story:

[Vretta] began in Anaconda, where he administered the sacraments of marriage and chrismation to several Serbian Orthodox believers. The priest moved on to Butte, where he learned of an Orthodox miner named Mike Gamble, who wished to see a priest in order to receive Communion. Fr. Vretta finally located Gamble after a long climb up the side of a mountain, during which he had only the assistance of dogs and a sled for his baggage. After his meeting with the miner, he reported, he managed to convince two Uniates to accept union with the Orthodox church.

In December of 1896, Vretta was transferred from Seattle… And I’m not sure where he went. He was only 37 years old, so he presumably had a long career ahead of him, but I can’t find him on any later lists of clergy (and I’ve got lists for 1906, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, and 1918). He doesn’t seem like the type of priest — non-Russian, literate, mission-minded — who would be sent to Russia; in fact, he’s exactly the sort of priest that was being sent from Russia to America.

It’s possible, I suppose, that he remained with Bishop Nicholas. In 1898, Bishop Nicholas was transferred to a diocese in Russia; perhaps Vretta joined him (?). If anyone out there has more information about Vretta, particularly his whereabouts after 1896, please email me at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fr. Ambrose Vretta: pioneering priest in Chicago & Seattle is a post from OrthodoxHistory.org. All rights reserved. Your use of this article is subject to our Terms of Use.

From 1870 to 1883, Fr. Nicholas Bjerring operated a Russian chapel in New York City. At the time, there were very few Orthodox Christians in New York, and Bjerring’s parish was always small. As we’ve discussed before, in 1883, the Russian government decided to pull its funding and close the chapel. Bjerring responded by leaving the Orthodox Church and becoming a Presbyterian minister. The next year, Fr. Stephen Hatherly, a convert priest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, traveled from England to America and attempted to start a new Orthodox church in New York City. His efforts failed, mainly due to lack of interest from the tiny Orthodox community.

Thus, for the rest of the 1880s, New York — and all of the Eastern United States — did not have even one Orthodox parish. But things were about to change.

Before 1880, immigration from Greece to America was inconsequential. In the entire decade of the 1870s, only 210 Greeks immigrated to the United States. That number increased tenfold in the 1880s: from 1881 to 1890, 2,038 Greeks came to America. And with most immigrants coming through the Port of New York, it makes sense that the Greek community in New York City grew substantially by 1890. (Of course, after 1890, and most especially after 1900, Greek immigration to all parts of the US would skyrocket. But even by the early 1890s, the Greek community in New York City numbered around a thousand.)

And of course, with a big Greek community, you needed a Greek Orthodox church. The Baltimore Sun (January 12, 1892) reported that, “since the closing of the Russian chapel, they [the Greeks] have found the lack of spiritual aid and counsel to be a great drawback to happiness.” In 1891, Prince George of Greece visited New York, and the Greeks came out to meet him. I’ll let the New York Sun tell the story (via the Wheeling Daily Register, January 12, 1891):

The Greek colony in New York has been growing rapidly in the past few years. When Prince George visited here last summer the Greeks found to their surprise that they were a thousand and strong. Then they thought what an excellent thing it would be to have a society.

And so they formed the Society of Athena, and they made a small restaurant on Roosevelt Street their headquarters. The Society’s secretary, a man named A.C. Evangelides, wrote a letter to Archbishop Methodius of Syra. (Incidentally, Syra is the same see that had previously been occupied by Archbishop Alexander, who, in 1869, ordained the American convert James Chrystal to the priesthood.) The Sun article continues:

The Archbishop conferred with a dignitary at Athens, and the dignitary at Athens wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Patriarch said: “To be sure. They must have a priest. As it is their souls are in peril.”

Things moved quickly. The Society of Athena made arrangements to rent the basement of the German-Swiss Evangelical Church at 340 West 53rd Street, and, as the Sun put it, they “set plasterers to plastering, and painters to painting, and carpenters to building.” Fr. Paisios Ferentinos arrived in early January (sent, apparently, by the Archbishop of Athens), and on January 9, he blessed the makeshift chapel. The next day, he held the first church services there. Among those present were the consul generals of Greece, Russia, and Turkey, as well as representatives of the Ralli Brothers merchant firm (which also had connections with the Greek church in New Orleans). And of course, the place was packed with Greek immigrants; for the first time in history, New York City had a Greek Orthodox priest.

Fr. Paisios came with impressive qualifications. He had been born on the fabled island of Patmos, and as a boy, he entered the monastery of St. John. When he got older, he attended a theological school near Constantinople, and then he returned to Patmos, where he taught Greek to the youth of the island. Then, for two years, he was a deacon in the Patriarchate of Alexandria. In 1885, Patriarch Sophronios ordained him a priest. From then until his departure for America, he had been librarian and assistant chaplain at the Pizarian Theological School in Athens. (This information is from the Sun article.)

Archimandrite Paisios Ferentinos, 1892

He also looked the part, to the joy of all the New York Greeks. Here’s a fantastic description from the Sun — if only journalists wrote like this today:

The Rev. Paisius Ferendinos is short of stature and probably quite slenderly built, although at first glance he appears to be fat. He wears atop his head a tall dark brown cylindrical hat, like a huge spool with the lower end sawed off. In this hat he keeps his hair, which is straight and soft and brown, and but for the hat and the hairpins he wears it would fall in a beautiful shower to his waist.

The face that looks out at you from behind the beard and moustaches, the heavy eyebrows and the blue glasses is mild and pleasant and most intelligent. The voice is soft and cultured, and you feel at once that Father Ferendinos is a gentleman of the type which is not confined to any nation or century. He speaks ancient and modern Greek, French, Italian, and Arabic. He is studying English, but as yet does not venture to speak a single word of it.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (January 11, 1892) was less verbose: “The Archimandrite is a middle aged man, and wears his hair on the back of his head done up like a woman.”

At the time it was founded, the New York church was one of only three Orthodox parishes in the contiguous United States, and the only one east of the Mississippi River. But everything was about to change. Just a couple of months later, on March 25, St. Alexis Toth and his Minneapolis parish converted from Uniatism (Eastern Rite Catholicism) to Orthodoxy. In April, the Greeks of Chicago established their own church, and in May, a Russian parish was formed in Chicago. The spread of Orthodoxy throughout the United States had begun.

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Artwork from the cover of the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, July 4, 1892.

Last month, I did a podcast on the attempt to form a pan-Orthodox parish in Chicago in 1888. (You can also read a post about it here.) That attempt failed, and in 1892, separate Greek and Russian parishes were founded in Chicago. The Greek church was founded in April, under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Athens, and with Fr Panagiotis (Peter) Phiambolis as the priest. Then, in May, a second parish was created as a part of the Russian diocese of the Aleutian Islands. It was called ”St Nicholas,” and its priest was Fr Ambrose Vretta.

Not long after this, Independence Day was celebrated, and the St Nicholas parish community joined in the festivities. Here is an article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on July 5, 1892:

Probably the most unique celebration of the day, as it was one of the most earnest, took place in the Graeco-Slavonian Church, No. 20 North Peoria street, yesterday afternoon. Members of the Greek faith in this city gathered there at 11 o’clock and with a monk of high order in picturesque vestments at the altar the mass or liturgy of Servian freedom was recited and applied to the natal day of American independence. The religious features of the services throughout were the same as those employed in Servia to commemorate the independence of that country, and the vestments worn by the celebrant were white and gold, symbolic in Slavonian churches of freedom won and enjoyed.

The church is known as that of St. Nicholas, but externally has nothing to indicate that it is a sacred edifice. The building is a two-story and high basement frame and the first floor is the church. On the end fronting the street the altar is placed, and in its symbols and decorations, resembles that of a modest Catholic church. When services are not in progress it is hidden by curtained partitions extending some distance from each wall, and in the center, where the altar steps begin, are two swinging doors, surmounted with a golden cross, and over that a silken curtain depending from near the ceiling. Except this altar space or sanctuary, the church is simply furnished, there being nothing to relieve its plainness and lack of suggestiveness but a few religious pictures on the walls.

The pastor of this church, the celebrant of yesterday’s services, which were in the nature of a Te Deum, is Fermillian, an Archmandrite of the Graeco-Slavonian Church, or a monk of high order, of which he was at one time the head or chief. He is a man of about 40 years, with a strong face and high forehead, framed in a heavy head of hair and full black whiskers. His eyes are kindly and his manner dignified and courteous. He speaks several languages fluently, but not English. He was rector of a theological school in Belgrade and had charge of the education of young King Alexander of Servia and resided in the royal palace. Being a monk he is not married. Priests of the Greek Church are permitted to marry, but by doing so are debarred from reaching any higher clerical dignity than that of the priesthood.

After the conclusion of the services, which were in the Slavonian language, the Archmandrite delivered an address, in which he spoke enthusiastically of the freedom of this country and the benefits it confers upon those of his own and other races who were the victims of oppression. He drew a parallel between the struggles of the United States and Servia. This happy land had won its liberties in one war, while Servia had been fighting for over 500 years and yet only a portion of the Slavic race was free. Bosnia, Herzegovinia, Macedonia, Dalmatia, and other States are still the victims of Turkish and Austrian tyranny. Only 3,000,000 Slavs are free in Servia and Montenegro and 4,000,000 are still in bondage. But he had hopes that a united Slavic nation would yet be like the United States, free and independent and happy. It was a glorious privilege, he said, to live in a land of liberty like this.

This Greek church on Peoria street is the first one of that faith established in Chicago, and it has been in existence scarcely two months. The Slavonians and Greeks here organized the Christian Orthodox Association about a year ago and sent a petition to the Metropolitan of Servia for a pastor. He complied with their request and sent them Fermillian the Archmandrite. The church now numbers about 175 members, and every Sunday additions are made to the roll. The intention is to begin the erection of a new and handsome church before long, and the expectation is that, at any rate, it will be completed for the World’s Fair and will be open for the reception and worship of Greek Chrsitians from every quarter.

Given that the Fourth of July has just passed, I thought it appropriate to post this article. But it also raises some questions. The Archimandrite Fermillian mentioned by the Tribune was apparently under the Serbian Church, and was sent to be the pastor of St Nicholas parish in Chicago. But the very same St Nicholas parish had been founded just two months earlier under the Russian Church, under the leadership of the Russian priest Fr Ambrose Vretta. And we know that Fr Vretta continued to serve in Chicago.

So what was a Serbian archimandrite doing in the “Russian” church in Chicago? I can only guess at this point, but here’s my theory. The Orthodox community in Chicago consisted primarily of Greeks and Serbs, with only a minority of Russians. The Greeks formed their own parish and got a priest from Athens. The Serbs seem to have requested a priest from Serbia in 1891. However, they were also in contact with the Russian authorities, and in May 1892, this culminated with the founding of St Nicholas church. But, communication being what it was in those days, the Serbian Church probably still sent Archimandrite Fermillian, who arrived in time to celebrate that distinctive Independence Day service. Since arrangements had already been made with the Russians, he probably returned to Serbia a short time after this.

While I can’t prove all that, what this confusion does demonstrate is the jurisdictionally chaotic nature of early American Orthodoxy. From one Orthodox community came two parishes, involving four ecclesiastical authorities — Russia, Greece, Serbia, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate (the latter having also been contacted by the Chicago Orthodox in 1891).

But, all that aside, the most interesting thing about the above Tribune article is how the Chicago Orthodox were attempting to embrace American life while retaining their Orthodox faith. They wanted to celebrate Independence Day, but they wanted more than fireworks, speeches, and parades. They wanted something distinctively Orthodox, and their solution was rather ingenious — to adapt a Serbian Independence Day service for use in America. And they were serious about it; the Tribune says that the Orthodox celebration “was one of the most earnest.” I don’t know if this practice continued, but it demonstrates a remarkable fusion of American and Orthodox.

Update: In the comments, “Linnapaw” posted a link to a page on the website of Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago. It includes the following note:

1892 – Archimandrite Firmilian Drazich, later to become Metropolitan of Skoplje, visits Chicago from April until September. Fr. Drazich has the distinction of being the first Serbian Orthodox priest to serve the Orthodox liturgy in Chicago (in a rented hall). Three Cathedrals in Chicago — Annunciation Greek, Holy Trinity Russian and Holy Resurrection Serbian—herald their beginnings from this common chapel.

As I said in the comments, while there was no formal Orthodox parish (and no resident priest) in Chicago until the Greek church was founded in April 1892, we know that there was a lay Orthodox organization prior to this, and it is certainly possible that they had a chapel. By the time Archimandrite Firmilian came along, the Greeks had already started their own parish, but the rest of the Orthodox community may have continued to use the earlier chapel.

The Serbs didn’t get their own church in Chicago until 1905. But long before that (beginning in 1881), they had an organization called the “Serbian-Montenegrin Charitable Institution,” which was renamed “Jedinstvo” in 1894. When Archimandrite Firmilian visited Chicago in 1892, he gave the group vestments and a chalice, and when the Serbian church was founded in 1905, Jedinstvo donated the holy objects to the new parish. It would be interesting to know whether the Serbian cathedral still has these objects.

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