Saint Paul Cathedral of Hempstead

History

The establishment of a Greek Orthodox community on Long Island began on April 21, 1944, when sixteen people gathered in Mineola, New York to form an interim committee. On June 13, 1945, the Orthodox Greek Catholic Community of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, New York, Inc. was formally founded, giving the Long Island Greek Orthodox faithful their first organized body. Father George Papadeas was sent by the Archdiocese to serve as priest in 1950, and a parcel of land was purchased on Greenwich Street in Hempstead where the first Saint Paul's Church was erected. Services were conducted on December 23, 1950 even though the building was not yet completed, a measure of the community's eagerness to worship in its own home. On April 15, 1951, Archbishop Michael blessed the cornerstone of the new edifice, and that evening the parishioners voted to take Saint Paul the Apostle as their patron.

The rapid influx of Greek Orthodox Christians to Long Island through the 1950s made it clear that a larger complex would be necessary. In 1955, the Cathedral property at its present location was purchased for $60,000, giving the community the grounds on which everything that followed would be built. As decades passed the parish continued to grow, acquiring additional parcels including a corner house on Cathedral Avenue converted into an educational building named in honor of Constantine and Carol Cassis. The mortgage on the church was burned in 1974, a milestone celebrated by a community that had built its home debt-free through the collective sacrifice of its faithful.

On Palm Sunday, April 3, 1988, Archbishop Iakovos officially proclaimed Saint Paul's Church the Cathedral of Long Island, elevating it to a rank that recognized its standing as the center of Greek Orthodox life across Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The following year, on July 17, 1990, His All Holiness Dimitrios, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, visited the Cathedral with the Holy Synod, celebrating Evening Services and joining the community for a reception and dinner, one of the most historic moments in the parish's life.

The Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Paul at 110 Cathedral Avenue in Hempstead serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Long Island as a parish of the Direct Archdiocesan District of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a Cathedral of more than 75 years whose thirty-two organizations and ministries have made it one of the most complete centers of Orthodox Christian life in the northeastern United States.