History

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Schererville, Indiana was founded in 1929 in East Chicago, Indiana, where Greek immigrants had settled in the industrial communities along the southern shore of Lake Michigan, drawn by the steel mills and manufacturing plants that made northwest Indiana one of the most productive industrial corridors in the country. In those earliest years the community gathered in temporary locations while it worked toward a permanent church, and in 1938, with Father Leontios Kyriakakos serving as pastor, a permanent church was constructed in East Chicago, giving the Greek Orthodox faithful of the Calumet Region their own house of worship for the first time.

As the decades passed and the parish's members followed the pattern of postwar suburbanization into the communities south and east of East Chicago, the community recognized that relocation was necessary to remain accessible to its congregation. In 1977 the parish moved to its present location in Schererville, Indiana, occupying a multi-purpose facility that included a banquet hall, chapel, and administrative offices. The move was guided by the Reverend Anthony Kanavos, who served the parish for more than forty years and whose pastoral leadership shaped the character of the community through its long transition from an urban immigrant parish to a suburban congregation.

After Father Kanavos' passing in 1990, the Reverend Constantine Aliferakis took the helm and led the community in the construction of a new church building, with groundbreaking in July 1990 and the Thyranoixia celebrated on March 15, 1992, with hundreds braving freezing temperatures on the Sunday of Orthodoxy to witness the opening of the new doors. The church was formally consecrated in October 1995. The new Byzantine-style church is adorned with 207 fresco icons created by iconographer Leonidas Diamantopoulos, covering the barrel ceilings, apse, and nave with a comprehensive program of Orthodox sacred art that includes both well-known and lesser-known saints, and a southwest alcove dedicated to saints of the Russian tradition reflecting the parish's Pan-Orthodox character. In 2004, the parish's 75th anniversary celebration was marked by the gift of a relic of Saint George obtained from Mount Athos, presented by Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira and Great Britain.

Saint George Greek Orthodox Church at 600 West Lincoln Highway in Schererville serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of northwest Indiana as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community of more than 300 families celebrating nearly a century of Orthodox witness in the Calumet Region.