The Ordination of Bishop-Elect Joachim Cotsonis, PhD, as Bishop of Amissos
Saint Sophia Cathedral, Washington, DC
Sunday, December 22, 2019
On Wednesday, November 27, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America received with much gratitude the official announcement from the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate that His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, together with the Holy and Sacred Synod, welcomed the proposal of the Holy Eparchial Synod of our Archdiocese for the election of an Auxiliary Bishop based on the triprosopon sent following the Regulations and Charter of our Archdiocese regarding the election of an Auxiliary Bishop.
Based on the above, the Mother Church elected a distinguished clergyman of our Archdiocese to the episcopacy, Archimandrite Joachim Cotsonis, with the title Bishop of Amissos.
Bishop-elect Joachim (John) Cotsonis, Director of the Archbishop Iakovos Library and Learning Center of Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, is to be ordained as the Auxilary Bishop of Amissos by His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America in Saint Sophia Cathedral on the Sunday before Christmas, December 22, 2019.
Very significantly for our congregation, in the 115-year history of our community, Bishop-elect Joachim is the first “native son” to achieve the rank of bishop of the Church. Words fail to adequately express our pride and joy, both in him and his achievements.
Please make every effort to pray with us on this great and historic day in the life of our community. It has been 59 years (November, 1960) since Fr. Aimilianos Laloussis was elevated to the episcopacy in Saint Sophia Cathedral. For most of us, then, the consecration of a bishop represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of such a spiritually uplifting and truly memorable occasion. Please spread the word to family and friends.
After his consecration to the episcopacy, Bishop-elect Joachim will continue to live in Boston and maintain his current position as director of the Library and Learning Center. Archbishop Elpidophoros will also assign him to various ecclesiastical missions and representations.
He was born on June 7, 1954, in Athens, Greece from parents Alexander and Demetra Cotsonis, both deceased. His baptismal name was John. From the age of two he grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC and was raised in Saint Sophia Cathedral, where he attended Sunday School and was an altar boy. His father was a first cousin of His Beatitude, late Archbishop Ieronymos I of Athens of blessed memory. He is also a cousin of the late Metropolitan Nicholas, of Phthiotis (Lamia) of blessed memory. As an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland-he was a member of the Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF).
He was Ordained to the Diaconate on December 9, 1979 at Saint Sophia Cathedral and to the Holy Priesthood on December 23, 1979 at the Transfiguration of Christ Church, Corona, NY, and was elevated to the rank of Archimandrite on May 16, 1998 at Holy Cross Chapel in Brookline, MA.
He served in 1980 as Assistant Priest at Transfiguration of Christ Church, Corona, NY, and as Priest 1981-1982 at the Saint Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church, Clarksburg, WV. From 1982-1990 he was the Priest at the Holy Trinity of Altoona, PA Mission Church.
A learned priest who organized the Archbishop Iakovos Library in a systematic way, he is universally known to be always willing and available in helping students with their studies and theological research.
After earning his BS from the University of Maryland, he completed his MDiv from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, his MA and Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University, and his MLIS from Simmons College. During his time in Pennsylvania he also served as one of the priests for the Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF) for the Pennsylvania State University campus.
Bishop-elect Joachim is one of two leading scholars in North America on the religious imagery of Byzantine lead seals. The seals are the richest body of evidence for the iconography of the saintly figures and their cult in Byzantium, and key documents for the study of both orthodox piety and the political use of religious art. Beyond numerous articles on these matters, he is the author of the book, Byzantine Figural Processional Crosses, which is now regarded as the standard work on the subject.
Before assignment to Holy Cross, Bishop-elect Joachim was an Assistant Bibliographer and Museum Exhibition Associate at Dumbarton Oaks Library, Harvard Center for Byzantine Studies. Over the years, he has served on the Governing Board, Program Committee, and the Local Arrangements Committee of the Annual Byzantine Studies Conference and was a Voted Member of the U.S. National Committee for Byzantine Studies. In April of 2007, he received the Alumni Award from the Department of Art History of Pennsylvania State University. Fr. Joachim also participated as an iconographic consultant in the 2nd and 3rd International Sigillographic Workshops for the Digital Cataloguing of Byzantine Lead Seals (SigiDoc Workshop) held at Dumbarton Oaks in December 2010 and July 2011, respectively. In July of 2015 and July of 2016, he was invited to spend time at Dumbarton Oaks as a research consultant in order to focus on the group of their ‘iconographic’ seals for the ongoing project of the online Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Lead Seals database.
.
