Tag: Russian


How Did Orthodoxy Get Into This Mess?


It almost goes without saying that the Orthodox world is a mess right now. The situation in Ukraine alone is a disaster: a Russian invasion of the country backed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the state, and a recognized-by-only-some Orthodox Church of...

The Unholy Side of Holy Russia


Some people think of nineteenth century Russia as an idealized Orthodox society – Holy Russia, a civilization on par with the golden age of the Byzantine Empire as a bastion of Orthodoxy. The reality of both societies is much more complicated. The nineteenth century as “Holy Russia” is not a...

The Georgian Patriarch’s Rebuke of St Tikhon


For centuries, the Orthodox Church in Georgia was autocephalous, with its own Patriarch (also known as "Catholicos"). In fact, for a long time there were actually two autocephalous Georgian Churches, one in the east and one in the west, each led by its own Catholicos-Patriarch. In 1783, the King of...

Who was “Agapius Honcharenko”?


Note: Last week, we met Fr. Agapius Honcharenko, who served the first known Orthodox liturgies in New York (or, for that matter, the United States of America -- remember, this is when Alaska was still part of the Russian Empire). (Click here to read that article.) Today, we continue the...

The Early History of Orthodoxy in Chicago


In 2011, I gave a talk at Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Westchester, Illinois, on the early history of Orthodoxy in Chicago. Here's the text of that lecture, basically unedited since I wrote it 7+ years ago. ******* The story of Orthodoxy in Chicago really begins in the 1880s....

Conference on St. Tikhon at Jordanville


On October 9-10, Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY is hosting a conference on the life and times of St. Tikhon, the great Russian bishop in America and later Patriarch of Moscow. I'm one of the speakers (on St. Tikhon's interactions with the other Orthodox ethnic groups in America), but...

Who was St. Tikhon?


Full name: Tikhon Bellavin Dates: 1865 to 1925 In America: 1898 to 1907 Who was he? Head of the Russian Archdiocese in North America at the turn of the 20th century, and later Patriarch of Moscow during the Bolshevik Revolution and its bloody aftermath. He was known for being a...

A History of the Antiochian Representation Church in Moscow


Since 1848, the Patriarchate of Antioch has had a "metochion," or representation church (basically an church embassy) in Moscow. Immediately before he came to America, St. Raphael Hawaweeny served as head of the metochion. Earlier this year, the must-read blog Notes on Arab Orthodoxy published a brief history of the...

Who was St. Raphael under — Antioch or Russia?


Who was St. Raphael under? It depends partly on whom you ask, and it also depends on when you ask. In 1895, when Archimandrite Raphael Hawaweeny came to America to oversee the Syro-Arabs, he was most definitely under the Russian Church. In fact, at the time, he was on the...

Photo of Unidentified San Francisco Priest


I was browsing in the wonderful photo collection at Alaska's Digital Archives the other day when I ran across the above photo, which was titled, "3/4 length seated portrait of unidentified priest." Who was he? The bottom of the photo gives us a clue, of course: the name "Weitz" (probably...