Philippine Orthodox Church

The Philippine Orthodox Church refers to the canonical Eastern Orthodox presence in the Philippines as a whole.[1]

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 order's missionary labors in the Philippines, records the presence of such settlers in Manila as early as 1618.[2]

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, Albay 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 anglicized 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[3] in Sucat, Parañaque City, Metro Manila, was finished in 1996 and was consecrated by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople in 2000.

Since then, other autocephalous Orthodox churches have established their presence in the Philippines. Also the local Greek community, a small community of Serbians and Russians living in the Philippines attend mass here. http://www.koreni.rs/prvi-put-u-istoriji-srpska-pravoslavna-misija-na-filipinima/

Churches

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

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 sixteen recognized autocephalous Orthodox churches.

References

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