St. Raphael of Brooklyn subject of 32nd Annual Schmemann Lecture

St. Raphael Hawaweeny

YONKERS, NY [OCA] – 25/1/15

The life and ministry of Saint Raphael Hawaweeny of Brooklyn will be the subject of the 32nd Annual Father Alexander Schmemann Memorial Lecture at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary here at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, January 30, 2015.

The lecture will be delivered by His Grace, Bishop Nicholas [Ozone], Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and Resident Assistant to His Eminence, Metropolitan Joseph.

Born in Beirut, Lebanon in in 1860, Saint Raphael studied at the Damascus Patriarchal School, the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Holy Theological School of Halki, and the Kyiv Theological Academy. He also served as a professor of Arabic language at the Kazan Theological Academy, which was widely known for its missionary efforts among the non-Christian inhabitants in that region of Imperial Russia and beyond. Upon his arrival in the US in 1895, he began ministering to the growing number of Arabic speaking Orthodox Christian immigrants dispersed across the country. In 1904, he became the first Orthodox Christian cleric to be consecrated to the episcopacy in the US by Saint Tikhon of Moscow, at the time ruling Bishop of North America, and Bishop Innocent [Pustinsky] of Alaska. As Bishop of Brooklyn, he served as Auxiliary to Saint Tikhon.

Saint Raphael was canonized in 2000 after a three-year study by a Joint Canonization Commission of the Orthodox Church in America and the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. The 100th Anniversary of his repose is being celebrated this year.

Bishop Nicholas holds several engineering degrees and a Master of Divinity degree, awarded with highest distinction from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, MA. Since December 2011, he has resided at the Antiochian Archdiocese’s headquarters in Englewood, NJ, where he administers the Diocese of New York and Washington, DC.

The lecture—free and open to the public—will be held in the Metropolitan Philip Auditorium of the John G. Rangos Family Building on the seminary campus. A reception will follow.

Additional information is available here.

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