Orthodox History

The Fate of Father Juvenaly: A story from Yup’ik history

Editor's note: The following article was written by Fr. Michael Oleksa, the foremost historian of Orthodoxy in Alaska, retired dean of St. Herman's Seminary, and member of SOCHA's advisory board. The article originally appeared as a chapter in Fr. Michael's fascinating book, Another Culture / Another World (Association of Alaska...

The World’s Parliament of Religions, 1893

Not long ago, I wrote a pair of articles on the visit of the Greek archbishop Dionysius Latas to the United States. The archbishop came to America in 1893 to attend the "World's Parliament of Religions," which was held in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair. When we last left Abp Dionysius, he...

Archimandrite Arseny’s Civil Suit against the Ruthenian Publishing and Exchange Company

As noted already when discussing the criminal libel suit that then-Archimandrite Arseny (Chahovtsov) instigated against Kirczow and Curkowskyz, he had filed a civil suit as well. The civil suit made the newspapers in April and May of 1909 but nothing was mentioned about it in the New York Times again...

Today in history: the death of St. Alexis Toth

101 years ago today, May 7, 1909, Archimandrite Alexis Toth died in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Here is the obituary that ran in the evening newspaper, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader: Rt. Rev. Alexis G. Toth, pastor of St. Mary's Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North Main street, this city, died at 2...

Today in history: Church bell stolen in Chicago

As you may have heard, a few weeks ago thieves made off with six church bells from Holy Dormition Church (OCA) in Cumberland, Rhode Island. The bells were soon recovered, albeit in a seriously damaged condition. The whole episode got me thinking about other instances in American history in which...

Archbishop Arseny: The Context for Canonization — Part One

(Editor's note: Today, we are very pleased to introduce a new author here at OrthodoxHistory.org. Deacon Matthew Francis lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and is one of the leading historians of Orthodoxy in Canada. For some time now, he has been conducting independent research into the life of Archbishop Arseny Chagovtsov,...

A few good links

On his Frontier Orthodoxy website last week, Fr. Oliver Herbel posted an essay outlining his position on Archbishop Arseny's canonization. In a follow-up post, Fr. Oliver responded to the charge that he was employing a "hermeneutic of suspicion." Finally, on his own blog, Gabriel Sanchez used Fr. Oliver's comments a...

Guns on Pascha, 1905

I was browsing my newspaper archives recently, and came across an article about a Greek Pascha celebration in New York, exactly 105 years ago today (April 30, 1905). Here's the whole article, from the New York Times: While more than a thousand persons were in front of the Holy Trinity...

New Podcast on Fr. Demetrios Petrides

On today's episode of my American Orthodox History podcast, I focus on the life of Fr. Demetrios Petrides, a Greek priest in Philadelphia and Atlanta from 1907 to 1917. It was Petrides who, as priest in Philadelphia, wrote a letter to the Ecumenical Patriarchate recommending Robert Morgan for ordination as...

OCA Canonization Commission issues statement

This past weekend, the Canonization Commission of the OCA issued a statement at OCA.org. According to Commission secretary (and OCA archivist) Alexis Liberovsky, the Commission will begin detailed studies of the lives of both Metropolitan Leonty Turkevich and Archbishop Arseny Chagovtsov, to determine whether the OCA should canonize them. Canonization...