Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia is the Australian archdiocese of the Greek Orthodox Church, part of the wider communion of Orthodox Christianity. The archdiocese is a jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. As of 2015, there were over 120 parishes and eight monasteries in the four diocesan districts of the archdiocese.

Archbishop Stylianos is the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia. He was appointed to the position in 1975. The archbishop is a theologian of international standing. He is the co-chairman of the official dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches. He has won an award for poetry and has written 16 collections.

The first churches founded by Greek Orthodox in Australia were Holy Trinity in Surry Hills, Sydney (1898), and Annunciation of the Theotokos in East Melbourne (1900). The first priest to serve the religious needs of the Greek Orthodox population in Sydney and Melbourne was Archimandrite Dorotheos Bakaliaros. In March 1924, the "Metropolis of Australia and New Zealand" was established under the Ecumenical Patriarchate to cover the expanding Greek population, which by 1927 numbered over 10,000 and had established churches in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Port Pirie in South Australia. The first metropolitan of the new province of the Ecumenical Patriarchate was Christoforos Knitis of Serres. In 1929, Metropolitan Christoforos returned to his homeland, Samos. He died on 7 August 1959.

In 1931, Timotheos Evangelinidis was elected as the second Metropolitan of Australia and New Zealand. He arrived in Australia on 28 January 1932 and presided over the church in Australia and New Zealand until 1947 when he was elected Metropolitan of Rhodes. On 22 April of that year, Theophylactos Papathanasopoulos was elected as the third metropolitan. On 2 August 1958, Metropolitan Theophylactos was killed in a car accident. In February 1959 the assistant bishop of the Archdiocese of America, Bishop Ezekiel Tsoukalas of Nazianzos, was elected Metropolitan of Australia. He arrived in Sydney on 27 April 1959.

...
Wikipedia