Author: Matthew Namee
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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 – Entered theological school at…
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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 outs with Antioch, which was…
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We Must Have A Bishop
The following editorial appeared in the Saloniki-Greek Press (a Greek-American newspaper) on Feb. 28, 1914. At the time, there was no Greek bishop in America. Until 1908, the Greek parishes were loosely tied to either the Ecumenical Patriarchate or the Church of Greece, but in 1908, the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued a Tomos transferring its jurisdiction in…
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Chicago Greeks oppose choral music in 1908
Several years ago, I began writing about the “Americanization” of Orthodoxy — things like pews, organs, mixed choirs, the cassocks vs. collars debate, clean shaven priests, etc. (Click here to read my article on organs in Greek churches.) Recently, I found a great historical source — an open letter from a group of Chicago Greeks…
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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 from the 1918 book Grand…
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Conference on St. Sergius of Radonezh
One of our SOCHA advisory board members is Deacon Andrei Psarev, church history instructor at Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY. He’s asked us to help spread the word about a conference being held at Jordanville on October 10 and 11 to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the birth of St. Sergius of Radonezh. Registration is…
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The Battle of Pacific Street, Part 4: Did St. Raphael Try to Shoot a Policeman?
In my last article, I wrote about the “Battle of Pacific Street” — the gunfight between Syrian Orthodox and Maronites in Brooklyn on the night of September 18, 1905. As I said before, St. Raphael Hawaweeny fled the scene and was chased (and then arrested) by a policeman, Officer Mallon. According to Mallon, St. Raphael…
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The Battle of Pacific Street, Part 3: Gunshots
As we’ve been discussing in detail, in September 1905, New York’s Syrian community was on the brink of war. On one side were the Orthodox, who rallied around their bishop, St. Raphael Hawaweeny. The saint himself opposed violence — both violent acts and violent words — but his attempts to intervene only exacerbated the problem.…
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The Battle of Pacific Street, Part 2: Eve of the Battle
In our last article, we left the two New York Syrian camps — Orthodox and Maronite — on the brink of war. Each side’s partisan newspaper attacked the other, and the Maronites took particular aim at St. Raphael, the Orthodox bishop of Brooklyn, accusing him of all sorts of outlandish offenses. Various parties received anonymous…
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The Battle of Pacific Street, Part 1: Trouble in Syrian New York
Editor’s note: This is a slightly revised version of an article that I originally published back in 2010. It’s also the first of a series of articles on the “Battle of Pacific Street,” and its aftermath. And just in case you’re reading this and don’t know who St. Raphael Hawaweeny was: he was the Bishop…