History

The Sts. Anargyroi, Taxiarchis and Gerasimos Greek Orthodox Church of Greenport, New York came into being through an act of faith and a midnight visit with a flashlight. In 1981, Bishop Vikentios of Apameia, of the Saint Irene Chrysovalantou Greek Orthodox Church in Astoria, Queens, learned that the Village of Greenport was planning to demolish a historic Protestant church building and replace it with apartments. With characteristic determination, Bishop Vikentios and his companions visited the building late at night to assess it by flashlight. What they saw convinced them to act quickly. The building was purchased and saved from demolition, and the Sts. Anargyroi, Taxiarchis and Gerasimos Greek Orthodox Church was established at 702 Main Street in Greenport.

The church is dedicated to a remarkable trio of saints: the Holy Unmercenary Healers, the Anargyroi, who gave their gifts of healing freely without accepting payment; the Taxiarchis, the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, commanders of the heavenly hosts; and Saint Gerasimos of Kefalonia, the sixteenth-century monk and healer venerated throughout the Greek island world as a protector and intercessor. The presence of these three dedications in a single parish reflects the community's deep roots in the Greek Orthodox tradition of the eastern Aegean and Ionian islands.

Bishop Vikentios himself credited the establishment of the church with contributing to the rebirth of Greenport, which was in economic decline at the time. A beloved local tradition grew from the parish's early years: an annual blessing of the waters procession that led from the church through the village to the harbor, filling Main Street with the sights and sounds of the Orthodox Theophany blessing, a gift to the whole community of Greenport's North Fork waterfront.

Sts. Anargyroi, Taxiarchis and Gerasimos Greek Orthodox Church at 702 Main Street in Greenport serves as a dependency of the Sacred Patriarchal and Stavropegial Monastery of Saint Irene Chrysovalantou, a unique ecclesiastical relationship that connects this small North Fork parish to the broader life of Orthodoxy on Long Island and beyond.