Saint Anthony Greek Orthodox Church of Pasadena

History

Saint Anthony Greek Orthodox Church of Pasadena, California serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the San Gabriel Valley and greater Pasadena area, and its story is as much a story of individual determination as it is of community faith. Greeks had been settling in Pasadena since the earliest years of the twentieth century, many of them working as gardeners on the great estates or as laborers for the utility companies. After the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922 brought additional Greek refugee families to the area, the Hellenic Society of Pasadena was organized to serve the community's social, cultural, and benevolent needs. For decades the Greek community of Pasadena traveled to Los Angeles for worship, attending the Annunciation Church on San Julian Street and later, after 1952, Saint Sophia Cathedral.

The push for a local church gained momentum in 1953, when Bishop Athenagoras visited Pasadena for a Greek School graduation and, in a spontaneous act that would shape the community's future, organized the Pasadena Ladies Philoptochos Society on the spot. The first bazaar the following September raised $2,500 and demonstrated that the community could sustain a church of its own. A series of meetings with Bishop Athenagoras followed, and on April 23, 1954, the Archdiocese issued a charter to the new Greek Orthodox Church of Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley. The first elected officers included Peter Stefanos as president, and community leaders moved forward despite considerable skepticism from Church authorities who preferred a satellite chapel model centered on Saint Sophia Cathedral.

The community's first permanent home was purchased in 1959: a former Church of Religious Science on Rosemead Boulevard, acquired for $76,500 after years of searching and a vigorous fund drive that raised the down payment from virtually nothing. The first Divine Liturgy in the new church was celebrated on November 29, 1959. On November 20, 1960, the church was formally named Saint Anthony, a ceremony at which Mrs. Mary Staikos, in honor of her late husband, outbid all others for the privilege of bestowing the name. Archbishop Iakovos visited the young parish on Labor Day 1960, honoring, in his own words, all the laborers who had worked to build a foundation for generations that followed. The Hellenic Cultural Center was completed and opened in 1966, and the annual Greek Festival, begun in 1971, found its permanent home at the Santa Anita Race Track.

The dream of a proper church building came to fruition in the 1970s. Groundbreaking was held on January 19, 1975, and the new Byzantine-style church opened on September 9, 1977, its 34-ton dome, one of the largest in Southern California at the time, raised into place by crane on April 26, 1977. The iconography was completed in stages by George Filipakis, and the total cost of the church with furnishings and decorations came to $657,500. On June 10, 1984, Archbishop Iakovos and Bishop Anthony co-consecrated the new church in a ceremony the community celebrated from early morning until late that night.

Saint Anthony Greek Orthodox Church at 778 South Rosemead Boulevard in Pasadena serves approximately 325 families as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community that built its church not through the patronage of a single wealthy benefactor but through the collective sacrifice and vision of its entire family of faithful.