History

Saint Athanasios Greek Orthodox Church of Aurora, Illinois was born from the determination of approximately thirty Greek families living in Aurora who had been making the drive to the nearest parish in Joliet every Sunday for years. In the early 1960s, Father George Kiricoples, then priest of All Saints Church in Joliet, began a regular schedule of services every other Saturday in Aurora, recognizing the community's growing need. In June 1964, several Aurora Hellenes met with Bishop Meletios of Chicago to consider establishing the first Greek Orthodox Church in Aurora. The requirements were met and approved by the Bishop, the Illinois Secretary of State, and ultimately by Archbishop Iakovos of North and South America.

The community's first real church home was a building at 228 East Galena Boulevard, which the Archdiocese granted chapel status in 1962. The men of the community, many of them members of AHEPA, acquired the building and cleaned and renovated it themselves. The main floor became the church, the upper floor the Sunday School classrooms, and the basement the social hall and kitchen. On September 1, 1965, Saint Athanasios received its full Ecclesiastical Charter from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, with Father Steve Zanis assigned as its first full-time priest. The parish was named in honor of an eighty-year-old parishioner, Athanasios Drossos, who stepped forward immediately to donate generously toward the new parish so that it might bear his name.

The immigrants who built Saint Athanasios came primarily from the Kandyla and Arcadia region of Greece, newcomers warmly welcomed by the older Greeks who had arrived in earlier decades. The parish became the center of community life for all of them, a place where Greek school, Sunday School, and parish organizations wove together faith, language, and heritage into a single living community. In 2025 the parish celebrated its sixtieth anniversary, gathering hundreds of joyful parishioners to honor the founding generation whose sacrifice built something that has now passed to the third generation of Aurora Greeks.

Saint Athanasios Greek Orthodox Church at 1855 East Fifth Avenue in Aurora serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the western suburbs of Chicago as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.