Department for External Church Relations
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Unique historical resource on the history of Orthodoxy in America freely accessible online
DECR Communication Service, 17/06/2024
To mark the centenary of the death of the Holy Patriarch Tikhon and the 55th anniversary of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America, the nearly complete digital version of the Russian American Orthodox Messenger has been published online with the blessing of His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of All America and Canada and Bishop Matthew of Sourozh, temporary administrator of the Patriarchal parishes in the USA and Canada. The project was carried out in collaboration with the New York Public Library. The work went on for the last two years, serving as an example of brotherly cooperation between the Orthodox Church in America and the Patriarchal parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA.
This valuable resource is now freely accessible online. It will be of use to professional historians and all those with interest in the contemporary church history.
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Founded in 1896, the Russian American Orthodox Messenger was the first official periodical of the Diocese of the Aleutians and Alaska. The Messenger published diocesan news, serving as the main source of information for the diocesan clergy of North America. It also contained articles and travel essays of the Russian Orthodox missionaries.
Its first editor was Priest Alexander Hotovitzky, dean of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York, who was glorified in the synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church in 1994. He was succeeded by Father Leonid Turkevich (who would later become Metropolitan Leonty). He worked as the Messenger’s editor from 1914 to 1930.
Among the notable authors whose writings were published in the journal were St. Tikhon (Bellavin)the Enlightener of America; St. Raphael the Bishop of Brooklyn; the Holy Righteous Presbyter Alexis Toth the Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America; the Holy Hieromartyr John Kochurov; and many others.
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