Sergius (Black)

Born in 1942 in the Protestant family of Frank Albert and Ethel Mildret Black. He spent his summers and vacations in a rural village in northern Vermont with his grandmother, who had a great influence on his formation as a child.

I learned about Orthodoxy by reading an article by the theologian and priest George Florovsky . In 1963, he converted to Orthodoxy, passing to the North American Metropolis (since 1970, the Orthodox Church in America ).

In 1964 he graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in philosophy, after which he entered St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary , which he graduated in 1967. In 1968 he graduated from the University of Fordham with a master's degree in Byzantology .

In May 1969, Bishop of Sitka and Alaska Theodosius (Lazor) was ordained a priest in the city of Sitka , Alaska. There he entered the Faculty of History at the Sitka Branch of the University of Southeast Alaska . He served in Alaska until August 1972.

In the years 1972-1973 spent an academic vacation at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex , England.

In 1973-1975 he was the rector of the Church of the Holy Wives of Myrrh Bearing Women in Western Scramento, California ^[1] .

In 1976-1977 he spent his second academic vacation on Mount Athos in the Monastery of Simonopetra .

Upon his return to his homeland, he nurtured a number of communities in the United States, until in 1982 he received permission from the church authorities to permanently leave the parish ministry and lead a monastic life.

In 1983-1984, he spent 18 months in Greece, where he lived and studied in various monastic communities - from small monasteries to large communal monasteries, both on Athos and in mainland Greece.

In 1984, in a small monastery in Western Europe, founded by his spiritual father, Archbishop Vasily (Krivoshein) , his monastic tonsure took place with the name Sergius in honor of St. Sergius of Radonezh.

Returning to his homeland, in the same year, he founded the Monastery of St. Gregory Palamas with his spiritual son, a monk in Trinity County, California. However, during his 18-month pilgrimage and monastic Greece, another monastic community of the same name moved to California, and in order to avoid confusion, Hieromonk Sergius changed the name of his community, choosing it as spiritual patron of Gregory Sinait , mentor of Gregory Palamas .

In 1986, the Gregory Sinait Monastery moved first to the San Francisco Bay Area , and in 2000 to Lake County , where among 300 wooded acres on the southern slopes of Mount Hannah (3,900 ft), on the eastern end of the Maykamas mountain range in Loch Lomond , a community of five has found its permanent home.

Being negatively inclined towards “modern syncretic ecumenism ”, in particular, to its main institutional expression, the World and regional councils of churches, the monastery, headed by its abbot, left the Orthodox Church in America in September 2000 and was accepted into non-canonical jurisdiction Holy Orthodox Church in North America .

On September 26 (October 9), 2001, the Synod of the Holy Orthodox Church in North America established the new Seattle Metropolitanate in the United States to the west of the Mississippi and elected vicar bishop Moses (Mahani) Metropolitan of Seattle with residence at the St. Gregory Sinait Monastery in Kelsville and Seattle ^[2] . The meeting took place in December of that year ^[3] .

On August 8, 2004, at St. Nectarios Cathedral in Seattle, he was ordained bishop of Loch Lomon, vicar of Metropolitan Moses ^[4] .

On April 9, 2011, the “Metropolitan of Portland and the West of the United States,” Moses (Mahani) and his vicar “Bishop of Loch Lomond,” Sergius (Black), petitioned for the transfer to the jurisdiction of the Florinite Synod of the Church of the Greek Orthodox Church ^[5] . “Metropolitan” Moses (Makhani) and “Bishop” Sergius (Black) motivated their decision by the fact that initially the “Boston Synod” was established as the American church structure of the old-style Church of True Orthodox Christians of Greece, but subsequently this connection with Greece was broken. Desiring to restore their lost dependence on the Greek old calendarism, which they called the Mother Church, the named "hierarchs" filed a petition for their acceptance into the jurisdiction of the "Florinist" Synod of the Church of the Greek Orthodox Church of Greece ^[6] .

On May 3, 2011, by the decision of the Holy Synod of the American Metropolitanate of the Florinite Synod of the Church of the Greek Orthodox Church, held under the chairmanship of the "Metropolitan of America" Paul (Stratigeas) , Metropolitan Moses was accepted into the jurisdiction of the Florinite Synod, while the title of Portland was adopted by Bishop Sergius ^[6] . Together with them, the administrative center in Portland, Oregon, as well as clergy, religious and laity, with parishes and missions in the western part of the United States, transferred to the jurisdiction of the Florinite Synod ^[5] .

• Ὁ Πόρτλαντ ΣΕΡΓΙΟΣ on the official site of the Callist Synod
• ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN WITNESS (USPS 412-260) MAY 2004, VOL. XXXIII, No. 5 (1536)