Orthodox Metropolitan Making An Official Visit To Spokane’S Holy Trinity Church

Orthodox Christians from Spokane and North Idaho are expected to gather at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church today and Sunday for special worship services featuring Metropolitan Anthony, spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox Church on the West Coast.

Metropolitan Anthony will preside over Kneeling Vespers today at 5 p.m. at Holy Trinity, followed by a roast lamb dinner. The dinner is a fund-raiser to help support Orthodox mission priests in Africa.

The Divine Liturgy will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Sunday. The public is welcome.

Metropolitan is an honorific title given to a bishop, says Father Stephen Supica of Holy Trinity. Metropolitan Anthony leads the San Francisco Diocese, which encompasses about 60 parishes in California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii.

The metropolitan will sit in a special bishop’s chair during the services, says Supica.

“In any Greek Orthodox parish there is a throne for the bishop,” he says. It sits empty when not in use during a bishop’s visit.

“It’s there as a reminder that we’re answerable to him.”

Orthodox bishops have no last name because bishops are chosen from the ranks of monks, not parish priests. Monks are required to be celibate, while priests may marry before ordination.

“When you’re made a monk, you’re given a new name,” says Supica. “Your old persona dies.”

Bishops and monks sometimes still use their family name for legal paperwork, says Supica, but some make a clean break with their past life and adopt the name of their monastery as a last name to use if needed.

Metropolitan Anthony was raised on the Greek island of Crete and endured the German occupation of the island during World War II and the Greek civil war that followed. He received a master of divinity degree from Yale Divinity School and also attended the University of Chicago.

He served a parish in Montreal before being named bishop of the San Francisco Diocese 20 years ago.

Such long-term appointments are not uncommon in the Orthodox church, says Supica.

“In principle, it’s for life,” he says. “They don’t like bishops moving about.”

The congregation of Holy Trinity will be joined by members of St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church of Spokane and St. John’s Antiochian Orthodox Church of Post Falls for Metropolitan Anthony’s visit. This is despite the fact that the two churches are Antiochian Orthodox, not Greek Orthodox, and Metropolitan Anthony is not their bishop, says Supica.

Even though there are numerous ethnic divisions in the Orthodox church, he says, they are still united in faith.

“It’s all the same faith,” he says. “It’s all the same worship.”

Supica adds that administratively it would be easier to combine the different branches of the Orthodox faith.

“We’ll eventually get around to fixing it,” he says.