History

Saints Nicholas, Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church of Roseland, New Jersey carries within its name the full weight of two of the oldest Greek Orthodox parishes in the State of New Jersey, communities whose combined history spans more than a century of Orthodox Christian witness in the Garden State.

Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Newark was established around 1901, making it the first Greek Orthodox church founded in New Jersey, known thereafter as the Mother Church of New Jersey. Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church was established in Orange around 1910, the second Greek Orthodox community in the state. For nearly a century the two parishes each sustained independent lives, serving the Greek Orthodox faithful of Essex County through the waves of immigration, the hardships of the Depression and two world wars, and the suburban migrations of the postwar decades.

By the late 1990s both communities recognized that their futures would be stronger together than apart, and in 1998 the merger process between the two parishes began. In 2005, seven years after those efforts commenced, the towns of Roseland and Livingston granted approval for construction of a new church to house the united community. Ground was broken in the fall of 2005, and on September 25, 2011, the Blessing of the Doors was celebrated, opening the doors of the new Saints Nicholas, Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Roseland, a magnificent structure renowned for its stunning iconography and Byzantine ceiling.

Saints Nicholas, Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church at 80 Laurel Avenue in Roseland serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of Essex County as the mother church of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of New Jersey, the ecclesiastical home of the Metropolitan of New Jersey and the center of Greek Orthodox life across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.