5 years for Georgios Basourakos, father of Spyros.

11 years for George and 8 years for Georgia Verikakis, parents of Eleni Votzaki, Nicholas, Joseph and John Verikakis, and Maria Kapottos.

Coming up…  11/29: Pete Gastis & Jimmy Nomikos;    12/13: Dean Paras

8:20 a.m. Orthros; 9:30 a.m. Divine Liturgy

+ Synaxis of the Archangels: Sun., Nov. 8.  

After Liturgy, we hope to once again deliver meals to the Rocky River Police and Fire Departments on the feastday of the  patron saints of the armed forces and first responders. Please contact Eleni at [email protected] if you can deliver meals and/or donate toward the cost of ingredients.

+ St. Nektarios:  Sun, Nov. 8,  6 p.m. Vespers;   Mon., Nov. 9,   Orthros & Divine Liturgy

+ Presentation of the Theotokos to the Temple:   Saturday, Nov. 21, Orthros & Divine Liturgy

+ St. Andrew the First-called Apostle: Monday, Nov. 30, Orthros & Divine Liturgy

Sun., Nov. 8, our officers will be sworn-in after Liturgy; there will be a Zoom meeting at 8 p.m. for all GOYA parents. 

Basketball practices will begin on Nov. 4 for the boys (Mondays & Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m.) and Nov. 8 for the girls (Sundays after Sunday School.)

Starting Nov. 8 Please consider donating your unwanted coats to the Blackfeet Nation. Ready to move on from an old coat? Have your kids outgrown theirs? Children especially are in need of coats for the upcoming Montana winter, but adult coats also welcome. Donation box will be located in the Zapis Activity Center.

Bread of Life next service date: Saturday, Nov 7. Volunteers also needed for Jan. 2. 

Contact  Christina (440) 665-1494 

Philoptochos’ next service date: Tuesday, Nov 10                                    

Contact Joanne Harootunian (440) 353-0910.     

The 2-year terms for the following Parish Council seats are ending: Marianna Karakatsani, Nico Papafil, Dka. Mary Seidl, Jonida Stuewe, Kurt Thomas, and Rachel Trotter, and  a 1-year term for the seat vacated by Abdu Elias. (They are able to re-run.)

Petitions of Candidacy have been sent to members in good standing via email or U.S. mail; copies also available in the church office.  Baptized/chrismated Orthodox Christians in spiritual and financial good standing with our parish for at least one year may submit a Petition of Candidacy. Petitions must be placed in the box outside the office, or received by mail by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 2026.       

The Election is scheduled for Sun., Nov. 22, following Divine Liturgy and until  12:00 p.m.

Sat., Nov. 14 at 10 a.m. in the St. Demetrios GOYA Room. Guest speaker Ted Cherpas, Director of the Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry. Refreshments to follow in the Zapis Activity Center.

Sun., Nov 15^th, Sunday School families are invited to decorate Christmas cards for homebound members of St. Demetrios with their children after Sunday School. Fast-friendly food will be served for lunch. RSVP:  [email protected] by 11/13

Nov. 16 at 6 p.m. in the hall. Mayflower: The Pilgrim’s Adventure  (1978;  1 hour & 38 min.)  In 1620, the Assembly of Pilgrims emigrated to the New England colonies to  escape religious persecution from the British crown, establishing the ethos of freedom of religion in the New World. Get in the Thanksgiving mood as we continue our tribute to America’s 250^th anniversary!  Free and open to all.

Those attending are welcome to bring some blank Christmas cards to sign during the movie. We will then forward the cards to the Orthodox Christian Prison Ministry (OCPM) for distribution to incarcerated people.

Wed., Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. in the Cultural Hall. Free and open to all adults (18-99!) from all the NE Ohio parishes  interested in learning / rehearsing Greek dances on the 3^rd Wednesday of each month. No previous knowledge necessary.

Sun., Nov. 22, after Liturgy, in the Hall. Contact the Church office to confirm your stewardship status. Agenda packets emailed to those with emails and hard copies sent to those who do not.

On Sun., Dec 20, in the hall, following Liturgy. The Greek School,  Choir and Sunday School will present the annual program of music, poetry and more! Talented parishioners who would like to play an instrument or sing a Christmas song in English or Greek,  pleased contact the church office by Dec. 11. 

Thu., Dec. 31 in the Cultural Hall, 8 p.m.- 1 a.m.  Groove your way into 2027 with food, beer, wine and dancing with DJ Judi. Champagne toast at midnight. $80 presale; $85 at the door. $25 for under 21; $70 for seniors over 70.

We are accepting donations of baskets and items for the fundraiser. Contact Kelly (216-410-2068) or Lilly (440-477-1237)

Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. in the chapel.

Contact Diakonissa Amy ([email protected] or 330-519-3100) to join, or to submit names for whom we can pray. 

We meet on Wednesdays 10:30 a.m. in the Parish Library. We are starting Everyday Saints and Other Stories by Archimandrite Tikhon. It is available in The Catacomb Bookstore (open Sundays after church and weekdays  during office hours.)

GREEK NIGHT Fri., Nov. 6, at Music Club & Grill, 4916 Pearl Rd., Cleveland. Live laika, rebetika & tsiftetlia by Lazaros on bouzouki, Dimitri on keys and Yanni on drums. Free admission.

CHIOS SOCIETY BANQUET  Sat., Nov. 7  at LaVilla, 11500 Brookpark Rd., Cleveland. 6 p.m. cocktail hour & open bar; 7 p.m. Dinner; 8 p.m. Program honoring Lou & Ann Frangos and presentation of scholarships.; 9 p.m. Dancing to live music by Apollo Orchestra. $100/person. RSVP to Dimitrios Kalafatis (216-990-1992)

A PATH OF PROGRESS Mon., Nov 9, 6 p.m. at St Mary Romanian Orthodox Church, 3256 Warren Rd., Cleveland. FOCUS Cleveland presents a panel discussion of current and former residents of St Herman’s House share their journey. $35/person. Tickets available at the door but advance purchase appreciated at: FocusCleveland.org/MyJourney

AN EVENING WITH THE CHOSEN Fri., Nov. 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Lakewood Civic Auditorium, 14100 Franklin Blvd.  Four actors from The Chosen  TV series will share behind-the-scenes stories and personal experiences. Free admission but advance registration required at NEOChosen.com

ST. PAUL CHURCH ANNIVERSARY Sat., Nov. 14, 6 p.m. St. Paul Greek church, 4548 Wallings Rd., N. Royalton, celebrates its 60^th anniversary with a Night of Music thru the Decades with Tony Quarles & the Discovery Band. Food stations and open bar. $75/adult; $40/child (ages 4-10.) Tickets at tinyurl.com/StPaul60years   or call Pres. Nicole Keares (440-409-1673)

ST. NICHOLAS DAY DANCE Sat., Dec. 5, 6:30-10 p.m.  at St. Nicholas Church, 2000 Tower Blvd., Lorain. Dinner & dancing to live music by Stigma. Cash bar. Semi-formal attire.  $40/adult; $15/child (6-12); kids 5 & under are free! Purchase tickets at 440-960-2992. Bring a new, unwrapped toy for Toys for Tots and receive a free drink ticket.

HOLY UNCTION FOR ADVENT  Wed., Dec. 9, 6:30 p.m. at St Mary Romanian Orthodox,  3256 Warren Rd., Cleveland, for all Cleveland’s Orthodox.  Bishop Andrei presiding.

 NATIVITY CONCERT Sun., Dec. 13, 3:30 p.m. Cleveland’s Orthodox Choirs will sing at St Vladimir Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral,  5913 State Rd., Parma. All welcome; free will donation.

~Nov 20-22: Fall Retreat at Camp Nazareth in Mercer, PA. for campers in 7th-12th grade. Camper registrations and staff applications now open at Y2AM.Pittsburgh.goarch.org/retreats

“Opening The Scriptures” Orthodox Bible Study via Zoom. Thursdays,  7-8 p.m. led by Rev. Dr. Eugen Pentiuc of Holy Cross. Recurring Zoom link: https://hchc-edu.zoom.us/j/84399084787?pwd=sxU3jn3SdX2lsMLJI55aQkiKX0PnmB.1

Fre

"EXPANDING THE LIVING PARISH" WEBINARS   Mondays at 8 p.m. 

Nov 16:  Healthy Catechism for Newcomers

Dec. 14:  Building the Orthodox Mindset

Register for FREE Zoom link at https://tinyurl.com/385needb

The Metropolitan Maximos Endowment for Youth & Young Adult Ministries is proud to announce the opening of applications for its inaugural grant, offering awards up to $10,000. Following in the footsteps of our beloved Metropolitan Maximos, this grant is intended to provide special funding to support innovative ideas, programs, and services for youth and young adult ministries throughout the Metropolis.

The Metropolitan Maximos Endowment was founded in 2020 in honor of Metropolitan Maximos of blessed memory. For over 32 years, “Metro Max” was the shepherd of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh with boundless energy, warmth, and love for the future of the Church. Youth and young adults programs were the crown jewel of his ministry. Whether sharing stories at Summer Camp, cheering at GOYA tournaments, or guiding young adults at OCF retreats, His Eminence pioneered Orthodox youth ministry in America because he deeply believed in nurturing, encouraging and developing the hearts and souls of young people to ensure the life and longevity of our Orthodox Church.

The Metropolitan Maximos Endowment for Youth and Young Adult Ministries was created to carry on this legacy and is proud to announce its inaugural grant opportunity of up to $10,000 available to support one or more applications for innovative youth and young adult initiatives.

We joyously invite parishes, clergy, youth workers, and lay leaders across the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh to apply.

• What We Are Seeking: The Metropolitan Maximos Endowment was created to push existing programming forward through new, impactful, and transformative programs, services, events, and grants. Ideal applications will be for creative, impactful, and organized new youth and young adult initiatives.
• How to Apply: The official grant application and guidelines are available here. Please submit your completed application by email to [email protected] no later than March 5, 2027 in celebration of Metropolitan Maximos’ birthday.

May the memory of Metropolitan Maximos be eternal, and may his love for our youth continue to bear fruit throughout our Metropolis for generations to come.

For questions or guidance on building or submitting a proposal, please contact Board Members: Linda Hages 412-523-7938 or Rhea Ballas 614-477-4267.

Those wishing to honor Metropolitan Maximos and help grow this permanent fund for future generations may make a tax-deductible contribution online at www.pittsburgh.goarch.org/support (Select “Metropolitan Maximos Youth Endowment”) or by mailing a check payable to the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh (Memo: Metropolitan Maximos Endowment) to PO Box 645953, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-5257.

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A museum in Clinton, Mass. that began as a collection of Russian icons is now giving a permanent place to Greek ones, part of a broader effort to present the Orthodox world in full.

The Icon Museum and Study Center opened its Greek Icon Gallery on Oct. 16, 2025. The gallery traces Greek icon painting after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when iconographers fleeing the expanding Ottoman Empire found work in places such as the Venetian colony on Crete. According to the museum, the installation shows how these Cretan workshops combined Western artistic movements with the spiritual forms of Byzantium. 

The gallery draws on the museum’s permanent collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the private collection of Emmanuel and Argie Tiliakos. Some of the icons have not been on public view in years.

The Icon Museum and Study Center grew out of the collecting of plastics engineer Gordon B. Lankton (1931-2020). During a 1989 business trip to Moscow, he bought a small icon of St. Nicholas an an open-air market, struck by its “simplicity and sincerity.” The museum notes Lankton had no prior interest in icons, and thus affectionately regards this icon as its own “wonder-working” one.

Lankton continued collecting icons for more than 20 years, and donated the collection to found the Museum of Russian Icons, which opened on Oct. 15, 2006.  Today, the institution remains the only U.S. museum devoted solely to iconography.

In October 2023, the institution took its current name as part of an effort to expand its collection to include sacred art from a wider range of Eastern Christian traditions. The Greek gallery is one result of this renewed vision.

> Previously: Icon Museum and Study Center marks 20th anniversary with rare loans, scholarly symposium

The museum marked its 20th anniversary on Oct. 15 and 16, 2026 with a two-day international symposium and a special exhibition, Light from the East: Masterpieces from the Ikonen-Museum Recklinghausen, featuring icons on view in the U.S. for the first time.

Aiming to serve as a resource for Orthodox communities in the region, the museum hosts study days, themed tours, dance and music performances, and a contemporary Russian literature book group.

Upcoming events

• Dec. 11, 5 to 7 p.m. The Yale Russian Chorus will perform sacred music inspired by the museum’s icons at a holiday gathering and tree lighting.
• Dec. 18, 1 to 2 p.m. “Mary, the Winter Rose Tour,” led by Museum Registrar Laura Garrity-Arquitt, will explore the Christmas story through icons of the Theotokos and the Nativity.
• May 22 to 31, 2027. Associate Curator and Study Center Manager Elliot Mackin will lead a 10-day tour of Northern Greece with Fr. Ilya Gotlinsky of Orthodox Tours. 

The post Massachusetts museum gives Greek icons a permanent home appeared first on Orthodox Observer.

When Pope John Paul II first convened religious leaders to pray for peace in Assisi in 1986, the world “was divided into opposing blocs and lived under the great fear of a possible nuclear war,” His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew recalled on Oct. 27, 2026. At that time, he said, the meeting was “considered bold and even reckless in the eyes of international politics.” 

Forty years later, at a prayer service in the Basilica of St. Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew offered a stark account of the distance between the former Pope’s aspirations for such a gathering and its tangible outcomes. “We continued to meet, but we failed to make a meaningful impact,” His All-Holiness said in his meditation on the Book of Revelation at the meeting. “We did not do enough to prevent the emergence of new nationalisms [that] diminish[ed] the value of the human person.” 

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was the guest of honor at this year’s International Meeting for Peace, organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, which drew 384 representatives of numerous faith communities from 53 countries. The meeting’s theme, “Unarmed and Disarming Peace,” drew upon the first words that His Holiness Pope Leo XIV spoke from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on the night of his election to the papacy in May 2025. There, the Pope described “an unarmed peace and a disarming peace, humble and persevering.” 

Pope Leo would join this year’s meeting only from afar, as doctors advised against the trip to Assisi following his Oct. 13 surgery which removed the lower lobe of his right lung in order to treat what was later confirmed to be an early-stage adenocarcinoma, or lung cancer. The Vatican said the operation was successful, with no complications. Speaking by video to the closing ceremony, Pope Leo said that while he was unable to join the meeting at the tomb of St. Francis, he nonetheless conveyed his support to all assembled to call for an end to the “troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics.”

> Previously: Archbishop Elpidophoros prays for the health of Pope Leo 

Approximately 130 armed conflicts were active at the start of 2026, more than double the number 15 years earlier. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, wars are lasting longer and growing more complex. Often, the parties to these conflicts are “challenging international humanitarian law or simply ignoring it.” 

Pope Leo, too, looked back to 1986 in his remarks. In the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, “many believed that globalization would ensure lasting peace” and “an almost blind faith was placed in the ability of the markets to generate prosperity, democracy and stability,” the Pope said. Instead, it seemed to bring about a new era of nationalist and fundamentalist backlash. 

“We must rebuild peace everywhere,” Pope Leo said, “not prepare for more wars.” The Pope added in his address, “There is no such thing as a holy war: only peace is holy.” 

The first Assisi gathering, on Oct. 27, 1986, drew about 160 religious representatives from a dozen faiths, TIME reported, among them Archbishop Methodios of Thyateira and Great Britain; Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury; the İznikİznik; and Mother Teresa. “There is no peace without a passionate love for peace,” Pope John Paul II told the assemblym then. Five years later, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was elected to the Ecumenical Throne and would journey to Assisi to celebrate the anniversaries of the gathering with Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 and Pope Francis in 2016, respectively.

This year’s Assisi meeting coincided with the 800th anniversary of the repose of St. Francis in October 1226. Pope Gregory IX laid the cornerstone of the basilica over his tomb on July 17, 1228, only a day after he canonized Francis as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.  

At this year’s meeting, Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Vatican’s Prefect for Promoting Christian Unity, led an ecumenical prayer service in the Basilica of St. Francis. His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the Archbishop of Bologna, offered meditations, and Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury, prayed for countries suffering from war, violence, and terrorism. Above and behind them, the apse of Francis’s tomb was filled with the Last Judgment: the dead rising from graves, an archangel beneath the Cross, and the condemned dragged down at the right.

> Previously: Archbishop Elpidophoros condemns Al-Karak terror attack 

Earlier on Tuesday, in a hall named after the Italian proto-Renaissance painter Cimabue, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew addressed a forum titled “The Ecumenical Patriarchate: From the East to the Global World.” 

“The Church that proclaims the Resurrection must at the same time proclaim peace,” His All-Holiness said. The Church, he said, has a duty to be present “where new walls of separation arise.” Skin color, ethnic origin, language, religion, sex or social condition, he said, “cannot add or take away anything from human dignity.” 

Of Christian unity, he said, “We long for that day as the watchman in the night longs for the morning.” Eleven months earlier, His All-Holiness and Pope Leo had prayed together with other Christian leaders in Nicaea (modern-day İznik, Türkiye), to mark 1,700 years since the first Ecumenical Council. 

Andrea Riccardi, the historian who founded Sant’Egidio, said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew “has planted seeds that will likely bear fruit even after we are gone.” Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the Archbishop of Marseille, said the Ecumenical Patriarchate, under Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras and then Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, “has demonstrated that it is possible to bear witness in a way that transcends borders.” 

During this trip, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew met with Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose predecessor Robert Runcie had come to Assisi in 1986. She congratulated him on the 35th anniversary of his enthronement, and His All-Holiness gifted her a komboskini—a prayer rope—from Mount Athos. 

His All-Holiness participated in the Assisi meeting as part of an official, weeklong visit to Italy. On Oct. 23, the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome presented him with gave him an honorary doctorate. The next day, His All-Holinesshe met Pope Leo at the Vatican and wished him a full recovery. On Wednesday, His All-Holiness laid flowers at the tomb of Pope Francis in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. 

In Assisi, His All-Holiness had closed his meditation with a charge to those gathered: “Let us become artisans of a peace that makes no noise, yet changes history.”

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