This morning, February 19, 2026, Metropolitan Dimitrios Couchell reposed. Although comparatively few know his name, he was, in fact, one of the greatest men in the history of Greek Orthodoxy in America.
This past September, I unexpectedly spent some time with Metropolitan Dimitrios. He was an old friend of my father, but he and I had never met. I asked him a bunch of questions about his life, and as soon as I got back to my hotel, I typed up notes from that conversation. This article is largely based on those notes.
He was born James Couchell in Greenville, South Carolina, to Greek-American parents, on February 17, 1938. (Meaning, he died two days after his 88th birthday.) He attended Northwestern for a year and then switched to Holy Cross, which back then was a six-year bachelor’s program. He graduated in 1963, and that same year, he attended the big CEOYLA Orthodox youth festival in Pittsburgh, where he was one of the two altar servers at the pan-Orthodox vespers.
After finishing at Holy Cross, he spent a year at Yale Divinity School. Next, he was going to take a job as a Greek school teacher at a parish, but the Archdiocese offered him a position — without giving him any details about what the job would entail. He went to New York to meet with Archbishop Iakovos, and he asked Iakovos, “What do you want me to do?” Iakovos said, “What do you want to do?” Couchell replied, “I’d like to do campus ministry.” Iakovos responded, “Well, then your job is to do campus ministry.” This was in about 1965. First, Couchell spent several months meeting with campus ministry leaders for other Christian groups, and he wrote a report on his findings. After this, he started visiting college campuses, where he would find out who the Orthodox students were, regardless of ethnicity or jurisdiction. He coordinated with local priests, again regardless of ethnicity and jurisdiction.
He spent about seven years doing campus ministry. Then, Iakovos assigned him to take over the official Archdiocesan periodical, the Orthodox Observer, which back then was a print newspaper that came out every other week. Couchell was the staff and had to basically do everything himself.
Couchell spent spent nine years at the Observer, and during much of that time he was simultaneously active in the leadership of SYNDESMOS, the global Orthodox youth and young adult ministry body. As the SYNDESMOS president from 1977 to 1980, he traveled widely, meeting with most of the Orthodox patriarchs in the world. His vice president was then-Archimandrite Kirill Gundyaev, the future Patriarch of Moscow.
In 1981, Couchell became the head of the nascent St Photios Shrine in St Augustine, Florida. The shrine was in debt, and Couchell made a deal with Iakovos: if Couchell could get the Shrine’s debt paid off, Iakovos would let him take over the Mission Center (then a Greek Archdiocese department) and run both simultaneously. After three years, the Shrine was paid off. For years, the Shrine effectively subsidized the Mission Center, paying Couchell’s salary.
After a couple years, Couchell realized that the Shrine had a nice chapel but no priest to serve in it. He had a seminary degree and by that point he knew he wasn’t called to get married, so he asked to be ordained, taking the name Dimitrios.
In 1994, under Couchell’s leadership, the Mission Center was transferred from the Greek Archdiocese to SCOBA, the inter-Orthodox predecessor to the Assembly of Bishops. Couchell continued to run the organization (now known as OCMC) until 1998, when he was consecrated Bishop of Xanthos — something he said that he never wanted or expected. He moved to New York and was appointed general secretary of SCOBA, where he continued his tireless work for American Orthodox unity and inter-Orthodox cooperation.
Bishop Dimitrios retired in 2007 and lived a quiet life in his later years. In 2023, he was elevated to titular metropolitan. Although he never served as a ruling bishop, his influence on Orthodoxy in America, both within the GOA and beyond it, was vast: a key figure in the histories of both Orthodox campus ministry and missions, and one of the leading voices for inter-Orthodox cooperation both in America and globally. When I met him last September, it was at an event in Southampton, New York for Patriarch Bartholomew’s visit, and there were two dozen other hierarchs present. Metropolitan Dimitrios, quiet and unassuming, walking slowly with his cane, was mostly unnoticed amongst all the activity, but he was perhaps the greatest man in the building.
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