History

Saint Anthony Greek Orthodox Church of Clairton, Pennsylvania stands as one of the most historically significant and poignant Greek Orthodox parishes in the Pittsburgh area, its story inseparable from the story of the steel mills and the Greek immigrant families who worked them in the Mon Valley.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Greek immigrants arrived in Clairton to work in the city's steel industry, among them Mike Bilirakis' father, who labored in the Clairton mills and raised his family in the small but tightly knit Hellenic community that took root there. Without a church of their own, the early Greek community held services in a local Episcopal church, a borrowed space that sustained their faith while they organized and saved toward something of their own. When the time came, the families of Clairton, men, women, and children, organized themselves under the leadership of Mr. Spirtos, the only Greek contractor in town, and literally built Saint Anthony's with their own hands. It became the center of Hellenism and Orthodoxy for the earliest Greek immigrants in the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

As the decades passed and the steel industry that had drawn the Greek community to Clairton declined, the congregation dwindled. The city itself suffered a devastating contraction as mills closed and residents departed. Yet Saint Anthony's endured. The church at 424 Miller Avenue remains standing, a regional historical landmark recognized by the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh and celebrated each year on the feast day of Saint Anthony in January with Panegyric Vespers and a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy, as well as once in the summer, with all proceeds going toward the maintenance of this unique historical landmark of Orthodoxy and the earliest Greek presence in the tri-state area.

Saint Anthony Greek Orthodox Church at 424 Miller Avenue in Clairton serves as a historical landmark of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a living witness to the faith of the Greek immigrants who built it with their own hands and whose memory it honors each year it opens its doors.