Eastern Orthodoxy in the Philippines

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Eastern Orthodoxy in the Philippines refers to the Eastern Orthodox presence in the Philippines as a whole.

Overview[]

Armenians and Greeks are recorded to have been the first Orthodox Christians on Luzón. An eighteenth-century document written by Pedro Murillo Velarde, a Jesuit historian describing their Society's missionary work in the Philippines, records the presence of such settlers in Manila as early as 1618.^[1]

Around the beginning of the 20th century, Greek sailors settled in Manila, however one group came to Legazpi, Albay on the island of Luzon. Their descendants in Legazpi City now number no more than 10 families, who have kept their Greek family names and have become distinguished public figures and intellectuals, including serving in the Greek consulate in Manila. One of the first Orthodox Christian faithful to arrive in the province of Albay was Aléxandros Áthōs Adamópoulos (later anglicised to Alexander A. Adamson), who came to Legaspi City in 1928. Together with his brother and cousin, he co-founded Adamson University in 1932, which is now owned by the Vincentian Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1989, Adamopoulos saw the need to establish the first Greek Orthodox church in the Philippines and thus established the Hellenic Orthodox Foundation, Inc., but he died in 1993 before the church was completed. The Annunciation Orthodox Cathedral^[2] in Sucat, Parañaque, Metro Manila, was finished in 1996 and was consecrated by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople in 2000.

Since then, other autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches have established their presence in the Philippines, particularly in Mindanao. Alongside the local Greek community, a small community of Serbians and Russians living in the Philippines conduct services here.^[3]

There is an estimated number of 200,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians living in the country. Those E. O. belong to the Moscow Patriarchate, to the Patriarchate of Antioch, and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.^[4]

Churches[]

There are three autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches with a presence in the country, the jurisdictions of which overlap with each other. These are:

• the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Mission in the Philippines, under the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East;
• the Exarchate of the Philippines, under the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; and
• the Patriarchate of Moscow, the jurisdiction of which is divided into:
  • the Diocese of the Philippines and Vietnam, under the Patriarchal Exarchate in Southeast Asia;^[5][6][7] and
  • the Philippine Mission of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, under the semiautonomous Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia.

There are also groups in the country which use the term orthodox in their names but which are not in communion with any of the fourteen to seventeen recognized autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches.

References[]

External links[]

• Philippines: The Dawn of Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodox Church
• Orthodoxy in the Philippines, OrthodoxWiki