Website for historic Russian church in US

[The young fogey]

http://saintandrewscathedral.org/

This church was started in 1897 as a chapel for the tsarist Russian Navy as two warships were being built for it at Cramp shipyard in Philadelphia. (At least one, the Variag (Viking), was sunk in the Russo-Japanese war, in which Russia tried to take Korea by force from Japan and failed.)

It’s really a pro-cathedral — the Moscow Patriarchate’s exarch, Bishop Merkury, lives at St Nicholas Cathedral in New York (built by the Tsar in 1901). It is one of the churches named as exempt from joining the OCA in the 1970 document creating the OCA from the Russian metropolia.

After nearly closing during the Cold War, it’s flourishing — most of those post-Soviet Russian immigrants in the city who practise Russian Orthodoxy have made it their church home. English is rare.

[Hypo-Ortho]

Beautiful website for St. Andrew's Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Philadelphia, Serge.  Thanks for sharing.

Do you happen to have a brief biography available of the current rector, Mitred Archpriest Mark Shinn?  Years ago before our conversion from the Unia to Orthodoxy, we met a Father Mark Shinn who was pastor of St. Ann's Byzantine Catholic Church in Harrisburg, PA.  I'm wondering if this Fr. Mark and the one we met over 25 years ago are one and the same person.

Hypo-Ortho

[The young fogey]

You’re welcome. All I know about Fr Mark is IIRC he is an American who grew up in Belgium and became Orthodox many decades ago.

[Hypo-Ortho]

You’re welcome. All I know about Fr Mark is AFAIK he is an American who grew up in Belgium and became Orthodox many decades ago.

Thanks, Serge.  There is a *remote* possibility that this could be the same Fr. Mark Shinn my family and I met about 27 or so years ago then--the same year as the RCC International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia.  Fr. Mark was just a tad "too Orthodox-leaning" for the BC's of that time.  

Hypo-Ortho

[Orthodoc]

[Thanks, Serge.  There is a *remote* possibility that this could be the same Fr. Mark Shinn my family and I met about 27 or so years ago then--the same year as the RCC International Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia.  Fr. Mark was just a tad "too Orthodox-leaning" for the BC's of that time. ]

I doubt it I don't think he's been in Philly that long.  Was the parish priest in my home town upstate PA church.  He's has a PhD and is extremely intelligent.

He is also the same Orthodox Catholic priest that made both the national and local news in both TV and newspapers a few years back.  

He was getting in his Van when it was car jacked.  They rolled him in a carpet and took him over to Jersey where they dumped him and shot at him  He managed to survive by playing dead and crawling up a bank to get help.

The young guy who shot him was caught and convicted.  Fr Mark personally forgave him and visits him in jail until today.  I had heard that the young man converted but I'm not sure about that.

Orthodoc

[Tags:]

OrthodoxChristianity.net > Moderated Forums > Other Topics > Topic: Website for historic Russian church in US