ROCOR Ordination for Pantocrator Monastery

On the feast of Pentecost this year, Fr. Kallinikos, the elder of the cell of the Nativity of the Holy Mother of God at Kapsala of the Holy Mountain (Athos), was ordained into the holy diaconate by His Grace Bishop Gregory at the Synodal Cathedral of the Holy Sign of Mother of God in New York. The next day, on Monday of the Holy Spirit, His Eminence Metropolitan Philaret ordained Fr. Kallinikos to the sacred priesthood at the convent of Novo-Diveevo in Spring Valley. Fr. Kallinikos remained a few weeks in the U.S. and Canada visiting friends and then returned to the Holy Mountain. He is the elder of Far. Theodoretos (John Mavros in the world), a well-known author of religious books. The elder Elder Kallinikos came with permission and at the recommendation of the Monastery of Pantocrator, of which his cell is dependency. The Elder Kallinikos and his synodia belong to the zealot fathers of the Holy Mountain who do not commemorate the Patriarch of Constantinople for reasons of faith. He chose to come all the way to the United States for ordination because of the confusion of church life in Greece, considering the Russian Synod Abroad as the bulwark of Orthodoxy today, “rightly dividing the word of Truth” in a world of apostasy and unbelief. We wish Fr. Kallinikos many blessed years as a worker in the Vineyard of the Lord.