Tag: Antiochian

The Legacy of Father Nicola Yanney

What follows is the text I used for a talk on Fr. Nicola Yanney on October 28, 2018, at a pilgrimage in Kearney, Nebraska, commemorating the 100th anniversary of his repose. Audio and video recordings were made of the talk, and those should be available at some point. I think...

Metropolitan Antony Bashir & the Use of English

Metropolitan Antony Bashir was the head of the Antiochian Archdiocese of New York from 1936 until his death in 1966. He said the following in an interview published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 4, 1939: The Eastern Orthodox Church has many national branches, each conducting its services, as a rule,...

A Man of Sorrows and of Faith

Editor's note: The essay below was written by Father Christopher Morris, pastor of St George Orthodox Church in Kearney, Nebraska. Fr Christopher wrote this in the wake of the tragic death of Fr Matthew Baker, a young priest who died in a car accident on Sunday night. Fr Matthew left...

St Raphael’s Original New York Chapel

St Raphael Hawaweeny arrived in New York City in 1895, and he immediately established a chapel for his growing community of Arab Orthodox Christians. The chapel was located at 77 Washington Street in Manhattan, right next to the Syrian Maronites' own chapel. The Orthodox chapel, called St Nicholas, was a...

A Timeline of the Life of St Raphael

A Brief Timeline of the Life of St Raphael Hawaweeny 1860 - Born in Beirut in November (family returned to Damascus the next year) 1874 - Tonsured reader 1877 - Worked as a middle school and 5th grade teacher (1877-79) 1879 - Tonsured a monk; appointed assistant to Patriarch of Antioch...

Recollections of My Grandfather: Fr. Joseph Xanthopoulos

Editor's note: In June, I published a biography of Fr. Joseph Xanthopoulos, an remarkable (and even saintly) Greek priest who first served in an Antiochian parish under St. Raphael before eventually joining the Greek Archdiocese. Fr. Joseph's story is both amazing and inspiring, and the more I learn about him,...

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...

Fr. Philip Abo-Assaley of Grand Rapids

Fr. Philipous (or Philip) Abo-Assaley was an early Antiochian priest who served under St. Raphael and, later, Bishop Aftimios Ofiesh. He founded St. George Orthodox Church in Grand Rapids, Mich. and served as its pastor for many years. Recently, I stumbled onto this very nice little biography of Fr. Philip...