The building is brand-new, the land never before scraped, but the site in Erie where St. Luke Orthodox Christian Church now sits has roots going back nearly two millennia.
Fr. Michael Oleksa
Abbot Gerasim (Eliel) was invited to celebrate Christmas and Theophany in Southeast Alaska, among the predominantly Tlingit parishes of Sitka, Juneau and Hoonah. They welcomed him and seem to have been favorably impressed by him.
On the sunny, beautiful morning of Sept. 11, 2001, John Costalas served a lot of breakfasts at his popular Essex House restaurant, where customers came early. Ten of them never came back, Port Authority workers who died in the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center a short while later. “They had breakfast here. Seven o’clock in the morning,” he said, pointing to their pictures on the wall where his eatery’s walls are a shrine of former customers who’ve passed away.
The 51-year-old Greek Orthodox priest has become a mainstay in the hardcore section at PAOK Thessaloniki matches, cheering on the team and offering help and guidance to many of Greece's most fervent supporters in the fearsome Gate 4 section of the Toumba Stadium.
The Turkish government's decision to allow the Orthodox patriarch to celebrate a liturgy at the ancient Panagia Soumela Monastery near Trabzon indicates that Ankara intents to further strengthen the rights of religious minorities in the country.