Tag: 1912


St. Raphael of Brooklyn on the Episcopalians


Today being the ninety-eighth anniversary of the repose of St. Raphael of Brooklyn (+1915), here is a pastoral letter he sent out in 1912 regarding relations with the Episcopal Church, mostly likely written on his behalf by Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine. Thanks to Fr. Joseph Huneycutt of Houston for posting...

St Raphael Hawaweeny & Spanish language Orthodoxy in the Americas


St Raphael Hawaweeny was a native of Lebanon, who in 1904 became the first Orthodox bishop ordained in the new world. As Bishop of Brooklyn he had oversight over the Syro-Lebanese communities that were beginning to appear in the Americas in the early twentieth century and he worked tirelessly for...

Fr. Sebastian Dabovich & the mystery of St. Tikhon’s miter


In 2009, I wrote an article on the miter (crown) which Archbishop Tikhon Bellavin gave to Fr. Sebastian Dabovich at the Dabovich's elevation to archimandrite in 1905, and which Dabovich later auctioned off to raise money for the Serbian war effort in 1912. Today is the anniversary of Dabovich's birth,...

Bogus aristocrats and Orthodox saints


At the very end of the 19th century, a fellow going by the name "Theodor O'Brien MacDonald, Baron de Stuart" appeared in New York City. His second and third names notwithstanding, the "Baron" claimed to be the son of a Russian general. He left Russia, so he said, because he...

Eulogy for St. Nicholas of Japan by St. Alexander Hotovitzky


St. Nicholas Kasatkin, the missionary bishop of Japan, died 100 years ago today. He was remarkably well known in America, where both secular periodicals and Russian Church publications chronicled his ministry. The official newsletter of the Russian Mission was the Vestnik, known in English as the Russian Orthodox American Messenger...

Old Calendar Christmas


Today, of course, is Christmas for those Orthodox Christians on the Old (Julian) Calendar. Until the 1920s, all of Orthodoxy used the Old Calendar, and of course that included all the Orthodox in America. As we've discussed, the American media thought that this was thoroughly fascinating, and newspapers often ran...