Thank you for your very generous gifts to our special “Father Flyboys” fundraiser.   I am so very grateful for your love and support.

Your generosity, and the generosity of so many parishioners and friends of Saint Sophia Cathedral, is truly inspiring.  Without an Annual Spring Festival, the Cathedral was left with unrealized revenue and a looming deficit.  Your gifts insured the success of a fundraiser that helped us make $125,511.00 in otherwise lost income that is so vitally necessary to the daily operations of the Cathedral and its ministries.

Father Dimitri and I received, quite literally, hundreds of encouraging comments from all over the world as we made this epic virtual trip from DC to Constantinople, and back.   We chose this theme for our fundraiser because Saint Sophia Cathedral, Washington, DC, is the seventh oldest Greek Orthodox community in the United States, and the very FIRST to be named after Justinian’s Great Cathedral dedicated to the Haghia Sophia, or the “Holy Wisdom of God.’’

Your gifts helped “fuel” this virtual trip and helped us honor both of these great cathedrals.   Thank you!  Thank you! Thank you!

I hope that you enjoyed the video adventures of the “Father Flyboys” as much as we enjoyed making them.

May God’s blessings be upon you and your loved ones, always!

Gratefully in Christ,
Father Steve

Thanks to the tremendous support of both Saint Sophians and the friends of Saint Sophia Cathedral, Washington, DC, the Father Flyboys have safely returned from their pilgrimage to Emperor Justinian’s Haghia Sophia in Constantinople — the Crown Jewel of Byzantium. The trip was a great success, for it both affirmed and honored a most historic relationship. As the first community in the United States to be named after Haghia Sophia, the Mother Cathedral of Christian Orthodoxy in the capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire, Saint Sophia Cathedral has affirmed her status as the Mother Cathedral’s First Daughter of Christian Orthodoxy in the capital city of the United States of America.

          In profound gratitude for all those generations of Saint Sophians, both past and present, who established our historic community, expanded it, maintained it and continue to support it with precious time and treasure on behalf of the future generations that will follow, a Memorial Service for the deceased and an Artoclasia Service for the living will be celebrated on this Friday, May 29, 2020, the 567-year anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople.

          Eternal memory to all Saint Sophians, who have passed on from this side of life to the other side of Life. Eternal gratitude to all Saint Sophians, who continue to support the ministries, mission and vision of our beloved Saint Sophia Cathedral, Washington, DC.

Your Eternally Grateful Father Flyboys