History

As the twentieth century opened, a mounting concern in San Antonio was the need for a spiritual home for the city's growing Greek community. A priest from Dallas or Houston would serve emergency needs with services at Saint Mark's Episcopal Church on Pecan Street, but in January 1924 a week passed before a priest could come to bury the daughter of George and Vaso Dounson. He and other men started meeting later that spring at Southwest Jacket Manufacturing Company, owned by A. Frank Petrutas and Bill Pappas, to organize the community and build a church. These dedicated men organized The Society and Church of Aghia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, on June 12, 1924. On August 7 they filed a charter with the Texas Secretary of State, incorporated for the purpose of building, maintaining, and supporting a Church of the Greek Orthodox religion. The first parishioners came from the Peloponnese, four families from Patmos, one family from Ephesus, and most from Asia Minor.

Land was purchased from the San Antonio Water Supply Company for $5,000 in November 1924. Construction documents were prepared and the actual construction began in late December 1925. With God's blessing, the Reverend Emmanuel Panos officiated at the first Divine Liturgy in late 1926, though the church had neither an iconostasion nor interior furnishings at that point. The furnishings came in June 1926, when icons were shipped from the Joasaph Brotherhood of icon painters at the Karyai Monastery on Mount Athos. The total furnishings cost was $10,000, and the formal dedication was given by Bishop Joanidis of Chicago on November 6, 1927, with a total construction cost of $86,000.

In 1961 Demetres Catacalos launched the first annual Greek FUNstival, a major three-day celebration of Greek food, folk dancing, and culture held first at La Villita in downtown San Antonio before returning to the church property in 1988. When the University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures began its annual Folklife Festival in 1972, Saint Sophia's congregation became regular participants, with a permanent display of artifacts from Texas and San Antonio Greek settlers assembled for Hemisfair 1968 remaining at the Institute to this day. Now approaching its centennial, the church retains its original hundred-year-old iconostasis and continues its ongoing iconography beautification program, with the Christodoulou brothers from Thessaloniki completing new handcrafted icons for the interior.

Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Church at 2504 North Saint Mary's Street in San Antonio serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Alamo City as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Denver within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, one of the oldest churches in downtown San Antonio and a century-old witness to the Holy Wisdom of God in the heart of Texas.