First Orthodox Bishop Consecrated in America (1904)

On the Third Sunday of Great Lent, 1904, Raphael was consecrated Bishop of Brooklyn by Archbishop Tikhon (Bellavin) and Bishop Innocent (Pustynsky) — the first Orthodox episcopal consecration ever performed on the soil of the Americas. He made his confession of faith in both Slavonic and Arabic, and the act stands as a founding landmark of the Orthodox Church in the New World.

Tradition: Antiochian Orthodox (Arab-American diaspora)

The Election

By 1903 Raphael’s eight years of mission had made him the natural head of the Arab Orthodox in America, and the Russian Church moved to give that leadership episcopal form. In 1903 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church elected Raphael Bishop of Brooklyn, to serve as a vicar (auxiliary) bishop in the North American diocese under its ruling hierarch, Archbishop Tikhon — a bishop for the Syro-Arab flock within the one multiethnic American Church (Orthodox Church in America, “Repose of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn,” Lives of the Saints, oca.org). The choice of the title “of Brooklyn” tied the new bishopric to St. Nicholas, the Brooklyn church Raphael had built as the center of his mission (see Head of the Syro-Arab Mission).

The distinction of the office should be stated precisely: Raphael was consecrated as a vicar bishop of the Russian archdiocese, not as the independent primate of a separate Antiochian jurisdiction — for no such jurisdiction then existed in America. His episcopate belonged to the pre-1917 order in which one Russian-led diocese embraced all the Orthodox of America of every nationality (see The Russian Mission and the Many Nationalities). This is essential both to the meaning of his consecration and to the tragedy of the fragmentation that followed his death (see The Fragmentation after 1917).

The Consecration

The consecration took place on the Third Sunday of Great Lent — the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross — in March 1904, and it was carried out by two hierarchs of the Russian mission: Archbishop Tikhon (Bellavin), the ruling hierarch of North America and the future Patriarch of Moscow and confessor, and Bishop Innocent (Pustynsky), his fellow Russian vicar (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). That the consecrating hierarch was the future St. Tikhon gives the event a double sanctity in the tradition: two future saints — the Russian patriarch-confessor and the Arab shepherd — joined in the one act (see St. Tikhon of Moscow).

The sources describe a two-day rite spanning the Saturday and Sunday. The solemn rite of the naming and election was performed after the Vigil on Saturday, 12 March 1904, at the Russian St. Nicholas Cathedral in Manhattan; the consecration proper followed the next day, Sunday, 13 March 1904, at the Syrian St. Nicholas church in Brooklyn, where Raphael, in a detail the tradition cherishes, made his episcopal confession of faith in both Slavonic and Arabic — the two languages of his ministry, symbolizing the union of the Russian mission and the Arab flock in his own person (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). The devotional tradition adds that his episcopal vestments were a gift of Tsar Nicholas II, a token of the imperial Russian patronage that sustained the mission (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org).

[Corrected: the date of the consecration is often given simply as “12 March 1904,” but the sources describe a two-day rite: the naming/election on Saturday 12 March at the Russian St. Nicholas Cathedral in Manhattan, and the consecration proper on Sunday 13 March at the Syrian St. Nicholas church in Brooklyn (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org). The event is accordingly and accurately cited as “12/13 March 1904” or “the Third Sunday of Lent, 1904”; the bare “12 March” refers to the naming rite the evening before the consecration.]

[Disputed: whether these dates are reckoned by the Julian (Old Style) or the civil (New Style) calendar. The Russian mission in America of this period used the Julian calendar liturgically while operating in a New-Style civil society, and published accounts do not always specify which reckoning a given date follows. This collection follows the OCA Life’s “12/13 March 1904, the Third Sunday of Great Lent,” without resolving the Old-Style/New-Style question, which the sources do not settle.]

Why It Was a Landmark

The consecration of 1904 was not merely the elevation of a worthy priest; it was a first in the history of the hemisphere. Raphael was the first Orthodox bishop of any nationality to be consecrated on American soil — indeed on the soil of the Western Hemisphere (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org; OrthodoxWiki, “Raphael of Brooklyn,” “the first Orthodox bishop to be consecrated in North America”). Every previous Orthodox bishop who had served in the Americas — the hierarchs of the Alaskan and North American mission from St. Innocent onward — had been consecrated in the Old World and sent; Raphael was consecrated here, by hierarchs already serving here, for a flock already gathered here. The Orthodox Church in America had reached the point of raising up its own episcopate on its own ground.

The symbolism was not lost on contemporaries and has only grown in the tradition’s memory. That the first bishop consecrated in America was an Arab, consecrated by a Russian archbishop, confessing his faith in Slavonic and Arabic, for a flock of Syrian immigrants within a diocese that also embraced Russians, Greeks, Serbs, and others, made the event a perfect emblem of what American Orthodoxy then was and aspired to be: one Church of many nations, indigenous to the New World and yet bound to the Old (see The Russian Mission and the Many Nationalities). When, at his glorification, the Church would look back on Raphael, it would see in this consecration the first flowering of an American Orthodox episcopate — and, poignantly, a unity soon lost (see Legacy).

An Episcopate Immediately at Work

Raphael did not treat his new dignity as a rest but as an enlargement of his labor. Within months of his consecration he had launched the diocesan magazine Al-Kalimat / The Word (its first issue appeared in January 1905), and by mid-1905 he was present at the consecration of the grounds of St. Tikhon’s Monastery at South Canaan, Pennsylvania, and presiding at diocesan clergy conferences attended by men who would themselves be glorified (OCA, “Repose of Saint Raphael,” oca.org; treated in Good Shepherd of the Lost Sheep). The consecration of 1904, that is, opened the most fruitful decade of his life — the episcopate in which the mission he had built became a diocese, and its bishop became “the Good Shepherd of the Lost Sheep in America.”

See Also

• Good Shepherd of the Lost Sheep — the episcopate that followed the consecration
• Head of the Syro-Arab Mission — the mission that earned it
• The Russian Mission and the Many Nationalities — the multiethnic diocese of which he was a vicar bishop
• St. Tikhon of Moscow — his co-consecrator; see especially Tikhon as Bishop of North America
• Orthodoxy in America: the Immigrant Era — the historical setting of the consecration

References

• Orthodox Church in America. “Repose of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn.” Lives of the Saints. oca.org. (The 1903 election as Bishop of Brooklyn by the Russian Holy Synod; the consecration on the Third Sunday of Lent, 12/13 March 1904, by Archbishop Tikhon and Bishop Innocent; the naming rite at the Russian St. Nicholas Cathedral in Manhattan and the consecration at the Syrian St. Nicholas church in Brooklyn; the confession of faith in Slavonic and Arabic; the vestments gifted by Tsar Nicholas II; the status as the first Orthodox bishop consecrated in America.)
• OrthodoxWiki. “Raphael of Brooklyn.” orthodoxwiki.org. (“The first Orthodox bishop to be consecrated in North America”; the consecration by St. Tikhon and Bishop Innocent; used to locate, per METHODOLOGY not a terminal citation.)
• Tarasar, Constance J., ed. Orthodox America 1794–1976. Syosset, NY: OCA, 1975. (The vicariate structure of the multiethnic Russian archdiocese in which Raphael was consecrated.)