Ordination and Rise in the Patriarchate of Alexandria

Anastasios Kephalas arrived in Egypt in the autumn of 1882 as a layman of modest means and departed it six years later as a bishop. This file traces the swift arc of his ordination to the priesthood on 23 May 1886, his ministry as a Cairo preacher and confessor, his elevation to the archimandrite and the role of Patriarchal Commissioner, and finally his consecration as Metropolitan of Pentapolis on 15 January 1889 — a rise that was as rapid as it was spiritually warranted, and that made him, in the eyes of the faithful and clergy alike, the most likely heir to the aged Patriarch Sophronios IV.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (canonized 1961)

Egypt and the Alexandrian Church Before the Ordination

The Patriarchate of Alexandria to which Anastasios Kephalas attached himself in the 1880s was an ancient see of apostolic foundation — the throne of St. Mark — but one then governing a relatively small Greek diaspora community dispersed across Egypt and the Sudan, subordinate in numbers and political influence to the Ottoman and later British colonial order (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina,” orthochristian.com/50001.html). Kephalas had come to Egypt around 1882, having spent years in Constantinople and the island of Chios; he took work initially as a schoolteacher at Lithovolon (also recorded as Lithochori) in Chios before finding his way into the orbit of the Patriarchate (John Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios,” johnsanidopoulos.com; “Nectarios of Aegina,” Wikipedia, citing the same Alexandrian sequence). He was a layman nearing forty, a man of genuine theological formation and unmistakable personal holiness, and his qualities were not long in attracting the notice of the most powerful figure in the Egyptian church.

Patriarch Sophronios IV — born Sophronios Christodoulidis, patriarch from 1870 to 1899 — was by the mid-1880s an elderly hierarch of long experience who valued both learning and pastoral zeal in his clergy (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”). The Patriarchate at that time administered the sacramental and educational life of Greek communities stretched from Alexandria to Cairo and into Upper Egypt, and it was chronically short of capable, educated priests and administrators. Into this environment Kephalas arrived not as an ambitious careerist but as a man whose friends and confessors had long discerned in him a vocation to the monastic and priestly life (Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life”).

Ordination to the Priesthood: 23 May 1886

On 23 May 1886, Anastasios Kephalas was ordained to the holy priesthood at the Patriarchal Church of St. Sabbas (Agios Savas) in Alexandria, the ordination performed by Patriarch Sophronios IV himself (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”). The choice of venue was significant: St. Sabbas was the Patriarch’s own church, the liturgical center of the Alexandrian throne, and an ordination performed there by the Patriarch in person was a mark of singular attention. He received the name Nektarios at his monastic tonsure, which preceded the priestly ordination — “Nektarios” meaning “of nectar,” and the name recalling St. Nektarios of Constantinople, the fourth-century patriarch who presided over the Second Ecumenical Council (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”).

The ordination in Alexandria was followed quickly by active pastoral assignment. In August 1886, Fr. Nektarios was appointed priest of the Church of St. Nicholas in Cairo, the principal Greek Orthodox parish of the Egyptian capital (Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”; OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”). Cairo in 1886 was a city in rapid transformation under British occupation — an expanding metropolis with a Greek community of merchants, professionals, and workers who were hungry for spiritual leadership. St. Nicholas’ was their parish church, and Fr. Nektarios arrived there as an unknown quantity.

Preacher and Confessor in Cairo

What happened at St. Nicholas’ in Cairo transformed the priest’s public standing within months. Nektarios was a preacher of extraordinary power. His sermons, which drew on patristic sources he had absorbed during years of intensive private study, were heard by Greek Cairenes who had not previously experienced preaching of that quality from the Patriarchate’s clergy (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”). Contemporary accounts preserved in the sources describe crowds gathering at the church not merely for the Liturgy but specifically to hear him — behavior that, in the Egyptian Greek community of the 1880s, was rare enough to attract comment (Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”).

His ministry as confessor was equally distinctive. He was known for great patience and discernment in the confessional, and for a capacity to speak to each soul’s individual condition — a gift the tradition of the Eastern Church associates with the charism of diakrisis, the discernment of spirits (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Saint Nektarios,” goarch.org). The pattern was already visible in Cairo that would mark his entire subsequent ministry: the press of souls around a man who was not seeking them, and the almost involuntary gravity that a holy life exerts on those who come near it. The faithful of Cairo did not need to be told he was exceptional; they experienced it.

Reports of the priest’s effectiveness reached Alexandria and the Patriarch. Sophronios IV began to take a close personal interest in his newly ordained priest.

Elevation to Archimandrite

Approximately five months after his appointment in Cairo — placing the event toward the end of 1886 or in early 1887 — Fr. Nektarios was elevated to the rank of Archimandrite (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”). The elevation was conferred by the Metropolitan of Nubia, acting on behalf of the Patriarchate of Alexandria — the Metropolitan of Nubia being the appropriate hierarch for such a conferral within the Alexandrian jurisdiction at the time (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”). The rank of Archimandrite in the Greek Orthodox tradition denotes a senior monastic priest, typically one who leads a community or holds a position of ecclesiastical responsibility; the elevation was both a recognition of Nektarios’ demonstrated qualities and a signal of what was intended for him next.

Shortly after the archimandrite elevation, Nektarios was appointed Patriarchal Trustee (also translated Patriarchal Commissioner or Patriarchal Secretary in some sources) — a position that brought him into the inner administrative circle of Sophronios IV and made him, in effect, the Patriarch’s confidential officer for a range of ecclesiastical affairs [Disputed: Sanidopoulos uses “Patriarchal Commissioner”; OrthoChristian.com renders the role “Patriarchal Secretary” or “Trustee” — the Greek term Patriarchikos Epitropos (Patriarchal Commissioner/Representative) is the form used in Greek sources, including Titos Matthaiakis, Ho Hosios Nektarios Kephalas (Athens, 1955)]. In this role he represented the Patriarch in dealings with the Greek communities, helped administer the affairs of the see, and was frequently at Sophronios’ side. The proximity to the Patriarch that resulted from this administrative role was one of the structural preconditions both of his subsequent rise and, eventually, of the envy that rise would generate.

The Patriarchal Relationship

The relationship between the elderly Patriarch and the Archimandrite Nektarios deepened over the months that followed the latter’s appointment as Patriarchal Commissioner. Sophronios was by this time in his seventies, a patriarch who had governed the Alexandrian throne for sixteen years; Nektarios was in his early forties, a man at the height of his intellectual and spiritual powers (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”). The bond that formed between them had a fatherly quality from Sophronios’ side: the old Patriarch recognized in Nektarios precisely the qualities — holiness, learning, pastoral effectiveness, and personal integrity — that the Alexandrian church needed in its next generation of leadership, and he did not conceal his regard (Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”).

The Alexandrian church in this period was a see of some prestige but limited geographic range, and the caliber of its senior clergy was not uniformly high. Against that background, the appearance of a man of Nektarios’ evident gifts drew the Patriarch’s attention powerfully. Sophronios began speaking of him with approval in contexts that went beyond the administrative; the sources note that the Patriarch, conscious of his age, was thinking about the future leadership of the church (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; Titos Matthaiakis, Ho Hosios Nektarios Kephalas, Athens, 1955).

Consecration as Metropolitan of Pentapolis: 15 January 1889

The death of Metropolitan Nilos of Pentapolis opened a vacancy in one of the titular sees under the jurisdiction of the Alexandrian throne. Pentapolis — literally “five cities” — was an ancient ecclesiastical title referring to the five great cities of classical Cyrenaica in what is now eastern Libya: Cyrene, Apollonia, Arsinoe (Teuchira), Berenice (Euesperides, modern Benghazi), and Barca (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; “Nectarios of Aegina,” Wikipedia). As a titular see, Pentapolis in the nineteenth century had no resident Greek community to govern in the geographic sense; its bishop was an auxiliary within the Alexandrian jurisdiction, exercising episcopal functions on behalf of the Patriarch across the Egyptian church. The vacancy created by Metropolitan Nilos’s death thus represented an opportunity to elevate a trusted lieutenant to the episcopate.

On 15 January 1889, Archimandrite Nektarios Kephalas was consecrated Metropolitan of Pentapolis by Patriarch Sophronios IV in Alexandria (Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”; OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Saint Nektarios,” goarch.org). The consecration was performed with the co-consecration of the bishops of the Alexandrian jurisdiction as required by canon. Nektarios was forty-two years old at his episcopal consecration — having been ordained a priest less than three years earlier. The speed of the ascent from deacon-and-priest to archimandrite to commissioner to bishop within approximately two and a half years was extraordinary even by the accelerated standards sometimes applied in small patriarchates to gifted individuals, and it was a measure of the confidence Sophronios placed in him (Matthaiakis, Ho Hosios Nektarios Kephalas).

The Metropolitan in the Patriarchal Household

As Metropolitan of Pentapolis, Nektarios continued in the role of Sophronios’ closest associate. He preached, he administered, he received the faithful in Alexandria and Cairo, and he bore the day-to-day weight of much of the Patriarchate’s pastoral and administrative work — the kind of labor that an energetic and capable bishop performs for an aging patriarch who can no longer be present everywhere (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”). His sermons, which he published in part and which circulated in manuscript, established him as a theological voice of substance within the Greek-speaking Orthodox world (Sanidopoulos, “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios”).

Sophronios was aging, and the question of his succession was, for anyone watching the Patriarchate closely, unavoidably present. The Metropolitan of Pentapolis was young, capable, deeply trusted by the Patriarch, beloved by the faithful, and visibly the first figure of the Alexandrian church after Sophronios himself. Whether Nektarios himself ever turned his mind toward the patriarchal throne, the sources give no evidence — and on the evidence of his subsequent conduct throughout the trial that was coming, there is every reason to think he did not (OrthoChristian.com, “Saint Nektarios of Aegina”; Matthaiakis, Ho Hosios Nektarios Kephalas). But what others read from his position, his gifts, and the Patriarch’s manifest regard was a different matter — and that reading would soon become the occasion of his ruin.

See Also

• Favor and Envy — how the very gifts that secured his rise became the ground of the clergy’s resentment
• The Calumny and Expulsion — the denunciations and dismissal that followed his rise
• Athens and Egypt — the formation that preceded his arrival in Alexandria
• Glorification 1961 — the ultimate vindication of the man the Alexandrian clergy expelled
• Biographies and Sources — the primary and secondary sources for the Alexandrian period

References

• Sanidopoulos, John. “A Brief Life of Saint Nektarios.” johnsanidopoulos.com (Mystagogy Resource Center). The primary English-language synthesis of the biographical sources, used here for dates of ordination, Cairo appointment, archimandrite elevation, and consecration.
• “Saint Nektarios of Aegina.” OrthoChristian.com (orthochristian.com/50001.html). Detailed biography covering the Alexandrian period, the role of Patriarch Sophronios IV, the archimandrite elevation by the Metropolitan of Nubia, the Patriarchal Commissioner role, and the consecration of 15 January 1889.
• “Nectarios of Aegina.” Wikipedia. Used to locate dates and cross-check the sequence of ordination, Cairo appointment, and episcopal consecration; dates verified against Sanidopoulos and OrthoChristian.com.
• Matthaiakis, Titos. Ho Hosios Nektarios Kephalas [The Venerable Nektarios Kephalas]. Athens, 1955. The foundational modern Greek biography; used for the Patriarchal Commissioner title in Greek (Patriarchikos Epitropos) and for assessments of the Patriarch’s confidence in Nektarios.
• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. “Saint Nektarios.” goarch.org. Used for the consecration date of 15 January 1889 and general biographical overview.
• “Pentapolis.” On the ancient Cyrenaican see and its five cities: OrthoChristian.com and Wikipedia both provide the standard identification of the five cities; the see’s status as a titular jurisdiction of Alexandria is noted in both sources.