500 Pilgrims Attend Feast Day Celebrations at Ellwood City Monastery

Western Pennsylvania's Monastery of the Transfiguration marked its feast day again this year with its annual pilgrimage. The festal divine services were celebrated by Archbishop Nathaniel (Popp) of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America (ROEA) and Bishops Melchisedek (Pleska) of Pittsburgh, Michael (Dahulich) of New York, and twenty-two other clergymen serving in the American Orthodox Church, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of Toledo, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. More on the pilgrimage, which drew some five hundred faithful from through the United States and eastern Canada, can be found here.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery was founded under the ROEA by Mother Alexandra (Issarescu), a member of the Romanian royal family, to provide a home for English-speaking women desiring to live the angelic life. Mother Alexandra's vision has largely been fulfilled as most of the sisterhood's members today are native to North America and, again for the most part, converts. The Ellwood City Monastery is also mother to Holy Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan, which was founded by Holy Transfiguration's second abbess.

Russian, Romanian Orthodox Hierarchs Concelebrate in NYC

Archbishop Justinian (Ovchinnikov) of Narofominsk, head of the patriarchal Russian Orthodox representation to the American Orthodox Church (OCA), concelebrated the Divine Liturgy today with Bishop Irineu (Duvlea) of Dearborn Heights, auxiliary of the OCA's Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America, in New York's Cathedral of St. Nicholas. The services were celebrated in a mixture of English, Romanian, and Slavonic. More (in Russian) here.

Former ROEA Clergyman Sues Archbishop Nathaniel of Detroit

Fr. Vasile Susan, a former priest of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America (ROEA) of the American Orthodox Church, is suing Archbishop Nathaniel (Popp) of Detroit and the ROEA over his removal from his former parish in the Chicago area. I don't know the circumstances surrounding the case personally, but reviewing the background materials posted here I'm struck by the oddness of Fr. Vasile's correspondence style and in particular the supposed record of his meeting with Archbishop Job (Osacky) of Chicago. Perhaps the record is a valid one, but some of the phrasing simply does not sound like Vladyka Job - it'd be nice to know whether the meeting was actually recorded on audio and whether the original document's signatures have been properly analyzed. Regardless, please keep Vladica Nathaniel, Fr. Vasile, and the ROEA as a whole in your prayers as this lawsuit goes forward.

Statement on the ROEA's Impending Union with the Bucharest Patriarchate

Vladica Nathaniel of the ROEA has just posted a statement on the impending absorption of his diocese into the Bucharest Patriarchate. I know of a couple of communities, one over half Romanian and the other hardly Romanian at all, that would prefer to remain part of the OCA should union occur and so one question I have in all of this is whether those communities of the ROEA that do not desire unity with the Bucharest Patriarchate will be released from the ROEA and allowed to remain in the American Orthodox Church, either as a separate non-territorial Romanian Orthodox diocese or as parts of the territorial dioceses, or forced to join the patriarchal Romanian Orthodox Church? It would be nice to see a statement on that on the ROEA's website at some point...

Romanian Orthodoxy in North America

So it appears that the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America (ROEA) of the American Orthodox Church and the patriarchal Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of the Two Americas (ROAA) are ready to unite. I'm not entirely sure what convictions are guiding Archbishop Nathaniel of the ROEA in endorsing the standing proposal for union with the Bucharest Patriarchate, but if it's the dream that the new episcopal assemblies and the supposedly imminent "great and holy council" are months away from resolving the canonical issues in our existing ecclesiastical structures in the West, then I fear he's setting himself and the pro-unity clergy and faithful of his diocese up for great disappointment.

God grant me to be wrong! I do find it sad, however, that the ROEA is prepared to give away its self-governance as a part of the OCA for an autonomy under the Bucharest Patriarchate that can be rescinded at any time by its holy synod. It is by far the larger of the two Romanian Orthodox jurisdictions in North America and the original Romanian Orthodox diocese in the New World and it is ignoring both facts for a union with the diocese whose past hierarchs viciously attacked the ROEA in the press, in the courts, and in the Church at large.

God guide us all to unity...