Category: Orthodoxy in the Americas
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The Cold War Origins of the EP’s Albanian Diocese
There are 13 Albanian Orthodox parishes in America, and 11 of them are part of the Albanian Archdiocese of the OCA. The other two belong to the Albanian Diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate —…
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Chronology of Terror: The Anti-Orthodox Istanbul Pogrom of 1955
It’s well known that the Greek Orthodox population in Istanbul is infinitesimally small — estimates these days usually put the number at under 2,000. It’s also well known that most Greeks in Turkey were deported…
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Athenagoras: The Apostle of America to Orthodoxy
In a previous article, I shared some of Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras’ declarations of loyalty to the United States, documented in U.S. State Department files from 1950-51. Thanks to Aram Sarkisian, I have since…
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Secret 1950 State Dept Memo on Ecumenical Patriarch
Lately I’ve begun to publish a series of articles on the relationship between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the United States government during the early Cold War period. The most recent of those articles focused…
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Patriarch Athenagoras’ Declarations of Loyalty to America
Thanks to my colleague Aram Sarkisian, I recently came into possession of the first batch of a trove of U.S. State Department documents related to the Orthodox Church — and particularly the Ecumenical Patriarchate…
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From Scotland to Minorca: New Perspectives on the Beginnings of the Orthodox Church in the Modern Americas
Introduction At the turn of this century two important collections of documents came to light in the north of Scotland[i], the content of which should adjust our understanding of the first steps of the…
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There’s a Piece of the True Cross at the Truman Library in Missouri
Yesterday, I published an article about the ouster of Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos V. In that article, I mentioned that on February 10, 1947, the Greek Archbishop Athenagoras awarded President Harry Truman with a piece…
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Ousting the Ecumenical Patriarch: the removal of Maximos V according to CIA records
World War II ended in 1945, and immediately, the United States and the Soviet Union began jockeying for leadership in the postwar world. The Soviets swept as many countries as possible into their orbit;…
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Greek Archbishop to proto-CIA: “Your directions will be executed faithfully.”
It’s long been an open secret that Patriarch Athenagoras’ election as Ecumenical Patriarch was arranged, or at least facilitated, by the United States government. It’s difficult to write about this as an historian, though,…
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The Legacy of Father Nicola Yanney
Ancient Faith Publishing recently released a wonderful biography of Fr. Nicola Yanney, the remarkable Syrian priest from Nebraska who died in 1918. I can highly recommend it — the title is Apostle to the…