History

The year was 1913. Wheeling, West Virginia, was a thriving industrial city of more than 41,000 people, home to churches of nearly every denomination, yet despite a growing population of Greek immigrants who had arrived in the city since the start of the twentieth century, no Greek Orthodox parish yet existed to serve their spiritual needs. That changed on November 10, 1913, when the Very Reverend Archimandrite Parthenios Kolonis traveled from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to address a large gathering of Greek Orthodox faithful who had come together to discuss founding a church of their own. Father Kolonis was a missionary priest from the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Theologian on the island of Patmos, the very island where Saint John the Evangelist wrote the Book of Revelation, and in honor of that sacred connection he named the newly established community Revelation of Saint John the Divine. It was only the second church in the United States named for Saint John and the first Orthodox church established in West Virginia, the fifty-eighth Greek Orthodox community founded in the country at that time.

At the first general assembly meeting on March 9, 1914, the community resolved to purchase a two-story home and adjacent lot at 2346 Market Street, applying $1,150 toward the $8,150 purchase price. By May 1, 1914, the doors of Saint John the Divine Greek Orthodox Church opened to the faithful, the modest home converted into a church at a cost of $2,919. The Holy Icons that adorned the iconostasis, painted by the renowned Iosafeous iconographers of Mount Athos, remain in the church to this day. At the general assembly of August 1, 1920, the community formed its first constitution and elected Vasilios Petroplus as its first president, leading a parish of 450 members. The Greek School was established the following year, in 1921, with Mrs. Evgenia Nickolus as its first teacher, and the Greek Ladies Philoptochos Society, the Areti Chapter, was organized on March 15, 1935, under its first president, Mrs. Gramatiki Kappos.

During the catastrophic flood of 1936, the church suffered serious damage, and services and Greek School continued at the YMCA and at Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church while the congregation worked tirelessly to recover. After twenty months, the church reopened under the leadership of the Reverend George Sakelarides. By the early 1940s the growing congregation had outgrown its home, and at a general assembly meeting on June 27, 1943, with Archbishop Athenagoras present, a committee was formed to pursue a new church property. Twenty-three business leaders of the Greek community raised an initial sum of $34,095 at a special meeting in April 1945. The present property at 2215 Chapline Street was purchased and converted at a cost of $195,000 into a church and Hellenic Center, dedicated on May 20, 1951, with the mortgage burning ceremony held on September 28, 1958.

Under the leadership of the Reverend John Geranios, the parish hosted the first choir convention of the tri-state area on August 29, 1948, at Oglebay Park, drawing twelve choirs and five hundred singers alongside Archbishop Athenagoras for a joint celebration of the Divine Liturgy. That gathering launched what became the Tri-State Federation of Greek Orthodox Choirs, now known as the Mid-Eastern Federation of Greek Orthodox Choirs, with Wheeling recognized as its birthplace. A time capsule was blessed and laid in the cornerstone on September 30, 1990, containing records of the parish's seventy-fifth anniversary, to be opened for the centennial in 2013. The generous bequest of longtime parishioner Marina Sfinas in 1991 enabled the complete renovation of the Hellenic Center, and through the 1990s the sanctuary was further beautified with the addition of the Last Supper icon, the Pantocrator, and the Platytera.

Saint John the Divine Greek Orthodox Church at 2215 Chapline Street in Wheeling serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Upper Ohio Valley as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community whose destiny, in the words of its own parish history, is guided by the will of God, steadfast faith, and an indomitable spirit.