On the fifteenth anniversary of Metropolitan Anthony's appointment as Bishop of the San Francisco Diocese, a commemerative album was published. Metropolitan Anthony dictated his memoirs, called "Mosaic of Life," and his memoirs were included in the album.

We have reprinted his memoirs here so we can share the story of his life with you.

Annunciation Cathedral
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Most of us have sunny, if often vague, recollections of childhood. Mine are neither vague nor sunny. I was just five when the Germans landed on the Island of Crete, a spot of much strategic importance.But a child could have no appreciation of such military realities. The only reality I knew was that a lot of strange and terrifying men had suddenly appeared in my homeland. Not that a child could have much of a concept of homeland either. Homeland was our village - Avgeniki. I have often wondered about the derivation of the name: might it have been a corruption of Evgeniki, a place of nobility, albeit of the peasant kind? Or perhaps related to avgi, the dawn? It was a warm and sunny place, a place of light, lying in a valley surrounded by gentle hills. It was my universe. Actually the boundaries of my world were pretty much defined by house and fields, modest enough, but our own.

The Germans were not the first aliens to come. Some thirty or forty thousand Italians, taken prisoner by the Greek army in the early stages of the war, had been brought to Crete. Now the Germans, arriving in a ferocious air bombardment, released them and they were gone. But the Nazis were to stay. I was ten when they, too, finally left. I could never comprehend why they were there, a dark and forbidding presence, a constant threat to our safety, indeed our lives. A small boy understood safety in terms of enough to eat - and there was never enough. We still harvested our olives and our grapes, and worked along with the grown-ups; it made for a meager fare.

I remember once my father removed the roof tiles from my grandfather's house, stripped away the wooden beams and rafters, and sold them in town in exchange for two sacks of wheat. I also remember being sent to the village commandant begging for bread. More humiliating, more degrading by far, was the forced labor. The townspeople, of all ages, were put to digging huge bunkers for ammunition storage, then fortifying them with great earthworks.

We younger ones fetched water in huge earthen jars from a distant well. One day the ears fell off one of the jugs and it went shattering. Explain as I might that we had not broken it deliberately, I was soundly cuffed on the face with the loss of several teeth. My father fared worse. Always a proud man, stern and unsmiling, he one day refused to report for labor. Soldiers came to our house, took my mother, along with several other women, shut them up in the schoolhouse and threatened to shoot them unless my father surrendered himself. He was soon caught and, of course, condemned to be executed. Only the timely intervention of the Germans' official interpreter saved him.

The residual bitterness of those childhood years, blighted by the daily experience of cruelty, of hunger and harshness, can best be understood in the light of an incident much, much later in my life. I was a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago and as such must pass foreign language requirements. I had a year of French and German at Halki, more German at Yale. But a deepening hatred had followed me into manhood. Four times I took the German examination. Four times I failed it! Only within the last year or two have I been able to deal with those withering memories. On the fiftieth anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the event which signaled the start of the Holocaust, I was invited to participate in a series of planned events planned in various German cities.

Understandably, I was of two minds about going and taking part. I was thankful I did. For now, as a Christian Bishop, witnessing the profound remorse of a whole people, half a century removed from that monstrous cosmic cataclysm of hate, I could no longer harbor the helpless rage of a child. It was not so much a matter of exorcising a tenacious demon as it was the demon simply fading away and out of my consciousness.

Schooling had been an intermittent affair during the occupation. The location of the school moved from place to place. The one thing that remained constant was the teacher, a gifted but autocratic man, not above using the rod when persuasion failed. For some reason I was something of a favorite, and was made a kind of monitor. I was not a very disciplined student, but I was bright a bright boy, what one would call "a quick study", who tended to get by on my wits rather than by hard work. At the age of thirteen, in 1949, I finished grammar school. Given our circumstances further education was a dim prospect to say the least.

But that would have been calculating without Monk Hesychios. I knew him well enough; he was a frequent visitor from the Monastery of Saint George. I have no way of knowing how good my father's wine was, but the Monk Hesychios fancied it. They drank together, Hesychios sometimes bringing a wild rabbit he had shot for my mother to cook. He always carried a gun under his rhasso which would remind me in later years of Kazantzakis' Kapetan Mihalis - a giant of a man with large blazing black eyes.

During one of their convivial evenings he said to my father, quite unexpectedly. "I think Antoni should be sent to Chania, to study at the Ieratiki Scholi." I overheard of course, and was thrown into confusion. My father was a stern man, not given to shows of affection. I was sure he would dismiss the idea. I was now a sturdy young fellow, though not very big for my age; (the years of deprivation, of poor food and little enough of that, had stunted my growth) I must stay at home and work. I didn't dare admit that the idea of going off to school appealed to me; to speak up. It was not that I harbored any real notion of a spiritual life. I fancied that I would go off for a year or so, come back, marry, and become a priest, a good life.

I took the examination and passed it. And so it was that I set out for the other side of the island, still barefoot and fourteen! I had never been to Heracleion! I had never seen any city, had no idea what a city was. My chief recollection was of my father coming back from town bringing pastanagles, a kind of large carrot, which were delicious.

At Chania the teachers at the Ieratiki Scholi, a kind of lower level seminary, did not believe my examination grade of 10. They gave me another special exam, which I also passed. In spite of this, I was told that I would be placed on a waiting list. Suddenly my father's drinking companion broke into the Synod Room, obviously well wined, and in no mood for niceties. The hulking monk withdrew his koumboura from the belt of his cossock, laid it noisily on the table, making it clear he was not accepting the decision.

And so began a new chapter in my life. With new shoes! Not mine of course; they belonged to my older brother Michael, and so were ill-fitting. But taking a small bag with my few belongings I went off to Chania, to spend the next seven years of my life.Hardship continued to be the norm; times hardly improved by the end of the occupation because Greece plunged insanely into an even more devastating civil war. Living standards at the seminary were marginal: bad food, often neither heat nor water. Nor did my study habits improve much. I never earned arista, excellent, but "lian kalos", very good, could always be managed without too much effort. But I learned something more important: those seven years generated in me an intellectual capability. And a deep and genuine gratitude. I had been given an unusual opportunity, and I knew it. I was the only boy to leave the village, the only one to graduate High School, the only one, as it turned out, who would go on to the celebrated Theological School of the Patriarchate at Halki.

Given the fact that I was the beneficiary of a church scholarship, which required maintaining good grades, I should have been more disciplined. I lost the scholarship for a year by failing math. But I managed to survive by working secretly at an airbase being built by NATO near Suda Bay. Another time I drew a five day expulsion for using bad language. There was no keeping this secret - I had to go home. Moreover, I had to carry a note to my father explaining the cause of my suspension and requiring his signature. Happily for me it was written in formal, almost classical, Greek, so I was able to edit the contents slightly. In fact I was brash enough to claim that these were days off to reward for good behavior! No one ever knew.

My guardian angel always worked long hours. Subconsciously perhaps, I may have been trusting too heavily on the auguries of a gypsy woman I had once overheard when I had returned to the village to help with the farm work.

She foretold for me a bright future - which featured a crown! I confess I have retained that image throughout my life. Also, there was the account, perhaps apocryphal, that when I was baptized, the oil poured into the font did not break up as it normally would, but instead formed a cross on the surface of the water. Add to this the fact that I was born on a Sunday morning, and you have ample reason for an impressionable young man to be on easy speaking terms with his guardian angel.

Again, once I completed seven years of Ecclesiastical School, chance played a role. In September of 1955, the Greek community of Constantinople was devastated by a vicious pogrom. It intensified the atmosphere of repression and set in motion the gradual massive exodus of the Greeks who lived and prospered in Turkey for generations, and today number than no more than five thousand souls. In the aftermath, Halki was left without applicants. Since the Church of Crete is under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, its hierarchy were approached to encourage promising young men to consider Halki, so I was approached. I knew about the other Theological Schools, at the University of Athens and the University of Thessaloniki. Halki seemed to me utterly remote. Moreover, I was still quite ambivalent about life as a priest. I had entertained notions of a career in the law, even in medicine. The fact is, I was still immature.

And there was the other, all to familiar, fact: there was no money, not even enough for a steamship ticket. A visit to the Village President was arranged. And the townsfolk, perhaps with more enthusiasm than I could muster, filled a hat with money enough to secure my passage. Lest you imagine this rustic reclining stateroom, let me assure you that on the sail to Athens I slept on the deck, likewise on the long trip to Constantinople.

It was 1956. I was 21. I have come to see how much more advanced a person of that age is here, how much more young people have, and know. As for me, the first adventure, or more correctly misadventure, found me unprepared. No one had bothered to arrange for a visa! Here I was on Turkish soil as an illegal. I was promptly sent off by train to Komotini, the nearest place where a consular official could be found. I was given a ticket, but nothing more. The trip took two days, during which I had nothing to eat. And no one asked. I am by nature a very hospitable person. But if this is also a learned behavior, I have been well taught.

Now "legal", I embarked on four of the most wonderful, most glorious years of my life. Intense, demanding, difficult, highly regimented, lived in what is after all a monastic setting, yet curiously liberating, almost exhilarating.

But the time of crisis soon came. Where I tended to drift along with the current, never quite making the commitment, nor feeling any pressure to do so, "keeping all options open" as they say, I realized that in my first year that this was no longer the case. The process of resolution began with a visit to my confessor, and confession consisted of the blunt admission that I did not believe. Exactly what I meant by this I'm not sure even if I knew. But he did. He being a wonderfully wise and compassionate Bishop named Gerasimos Kalokairinos. As I wept in the chapel, he lectured me gently and eloquently on the issue of self-discovery. "God is struggling with you", he said. "And you are wrestling with God".

What he didn’t say was what an uneven battle it would be. But I knew that already. In the year-long process of soul-searching that followed, there were splendid models all around us, from Patriarch Athenagoras down to the lowest deacon. And so it was that at 21, actually 20-and-a-half, I found myself climbing the stairs to the second floor office of the Dean, Metropolitan Maximos, that I had decided to be ordained – celibate. "Come back in six months", he said. Then added "Who influenced you?" Obviously, there had been many who made an impression on my young and unformed mind.

My thoughts went first to Eirenaios Galandris at Chania – a cultivated man, an idealist, a romantic – who had a strong impact on all of us during those seven years. I had a personal journal during that time, which I later looked through. I thought, "Was this really me?"

Evidently the six-month "probation" was successfully passed, so in my second year at Halki, on the 27^th of August, in the Church of Saint Nicholas, in town, not in the Seminary chapel, I was ordained Deacon by Dorotheos, Metropolitan of the Princess Islands. It was an extraordinary privilege, not least because I could remain "independent", that is, not directly related to a particular geronta, a patron.

Since I had been the first in our class to be ordained, the prerogative fell to me to deliver the valedictory address at commencement, a daunting prospect given the presence of the Patriarch, the members of the Holy Synod and an array of dignitaries. At the conclusion, as I reverenced the hand of the Patriarch, towering majestically over me, he said with that familiar twinkle in his eye, "You didn’t learn very much, did you?" It appears I had used a participle in the feminine when it should have been masculine – or the other way about for all I remember. Then he said, "I have in mind to send you to Paradise."

"Must I go so soon?" I quipped somewhat uneasily.

"I see you’re a bit of a jokester, too. Come and see me next week."

My next, and last encounter with His Holiness was therefore at the Phanar itself.  I was not alone in the anteroom. Waiting with me was a hierarch whom I had never seen. I soon learned that he was the Archbishop of Thyateira, Athenagoras Cavadas, head of the Church in Great Britain, one time Dean of the Holy Cross Theological School, then at Pomfret, Connecticut, now in Boston. The Patriarch greeted him most warmly, then introduced me, with the information that he was sending me to America. At this time the Archbishop went into a fury, expressing himself vigorously in a way that only their many years of close friendship would have permitted. Evidently he had premised one of the first graduates in my class. The Patriarch quieted him, saying, "I think Deacon Anthony will do well in America."

I now returned to Crete, to be ordained Priest for a small parish not far from home, and to await the invitation from Archbishop Iakovos to come to America. In time it came. I packed what meager possessions I had, including my one modest set of vestments and little else, augmented by such thoughtful provisions as a very large chunk of Cretan cheese, a jar of Cretan honey, and a store of our own homegrown raisins.

In Athens I had the good fortune to meet Father Tom Paris who was then enrolled in the University of Athens (Guardian angel working overtime). He helped arrange for my passage, just under three hundred dollars, in such a way that I left Greece with some ten dollars left over, a magnificent sum. I enjoyed the privileges of the captain's table on the S.S. Transoceanic, celebrated Liturgy on board, and generally enjoyed the illusory sense of well-being on the twelve-and-a-half day journey. So much so that the indulgence of a shipboard haircut seemed altogether reasonable. A dollar would cover cover it, I thought. Three dollars, the man said. My fortune was quickly dwindling. But soon the Promised Land. Promises were also what I left behind on that worthy vessel. It was confided to me that one must give gratuities to the cabin stewards, the dining room servers, etc. "How much?" I inquired. "Oh, maybe twenty dollars." "Twenty dollars!" "Each.". As I disembarked I handed each one a neatly penned note, written in very formal Greek on ship's stationery, in fact a promissory note, that each would receive twenty dollars as an expression of my thanks - when I had it!

In New York I was first taken in hand by members of the DAR. I had no idea who the Daughters of the American Revolution were, but I was grateful to them for seeing me safely through these first steps on the Promised Land. Promised Land indeed, I thought, as I met by Father Philotheos, then the Archbishop's Deacon, now Bishop of Meloa, and ushered into the longest, sleekest car I had ever seen. Threading our way uptown, we soon arrived at the Archdiocese, a splendid stone building just across from a beautiful park. I had more than ample opportunity to experience its awesome hush as people whisked past, giving me an occasional curious glance.

Five-and-a-half hours later it was back in the Lincoln, His Eminence up front, Father George Bacopulos, the Chancellor driving, Father Philotheos and I in the back.  Destination: Boston, the Holy Cross Theological School. After some two hours, as the highway skirted a large city, the Archbishop pointed to a cluster of stone towers on the near horizon. "That is where I want you to go", he said. The city was New Haven; the towers were Yale University. So, perhaps the Patriarch's judgement was not altogether accurate. Perhaps I was thought to be the "scholarly type" after all. Before long I would in fact be enrolled at Yale Divinity School.

It was a cool day and the car windows were closed. I soon became aware of the Archiepiscopal nose twitching and sniffing, as if assailed by something unpleasant. I had a suspicion but thought it prudent to keep my counsel. Finally, he exploded, "What in heaven's name is that unspeakable smell?" I was forced to admit timidly, that it was probably my cheese, which by this time had ripened into a moist mossy old age. On examination it appeared that the honey jar had broken, who knows how long before, and the raisins had degenerated into inedible mush. The condition of my other belongings may be guessed at.

On arrival I was put in the care of Father Nicholas Katinas, who spent a year at Halki and is now the Priest in Dallas. He took me to Walgreen's Drug Store where I obtained a toothbrush, toothpaste and other necessities. I stayed three months at the Seminary, attending a nearby ESL, an institute for English as a Second Language. I did well. In due course it was reported to New York that I was ready to be assigned.

Ansonia, Connecticut, is a smallish town, half an hour south of New Haven, with a small but vigorous Greek community.  I immediately came to realize that years of training in delivering sermons in high puristic Greek had ill prepared me for the situation in America.  My first attempts at sermons were met with polite uncomprehending stares.  To show my good will I had a friend transcribe a passage from a spiritual book into Greek phonetics.  The next Sunday I stood and read this as my sermon.  I have no idea how much of my "English" could be understood but at the conclusion of the sermon the congregation gave me a standing ovation!  I was awarded for the attempt and realized I had to master this new language quickly.  I learned to love America and the Greek-American community in Ansonia.  In many ways I still consider it my "home town."  Meanwhile, Yale's historic towers also game me their welcome.  It was here that I came under the tutelage of Jaroslav Pelikan, a distinguished Professor of Church History, who remains one of my most cherished friends.  At Yale I received a Masters of Divinity, and upon recommendation of Professor Pelikan applied to the University of Chicago.

Four years had passed swiftly, then it was a second academic venue, the great University of Chicago, and the Parish at Chicago Heights.   It was a community in transition having lost the "old-timers" and its neighborhood base:  the church was in the middle of a black ghetto.  It presented a different picture of Church life in America with new problems to solve.   During this time I was able to bring my sister Chrysoula to America.  Having her with me was a great blessing and took the sting out of the loneliness the celibate priesthood can bring.  In later years my brother, George, his wife Yannoula, and my sister, Eleni, and her husband, Strati, have followed the thousands of other Greeks who have made America their second homeland.

Here, at the University of Chicago, another icon of American higher theological education entered my personal little temple of veneration, in the person of Martin Marty, also a Church Historian, and one of the most acute observers of American religious life.  Another deep and lasting impression and influence.   Due to an inability to pass the German exam, I did not complete my doctorate there, and thus did not write my thesis on the history of the Orthodox Church in America.   When, years later, I saw Professor Marty again, he chided me for this.  I replied, "I am not writing history; I am making it."

Those two formative decades seemed to divide themselves into more or less equal quarters of four to five years, no doubt providentially, given my restless disposition.  The third chapter saw me in yet a third distinguished academic setting, the wonderful University of Wisconsin, and still another lasting friendship, with professor "Mike" Petrovich, whose death recently saddened me deeply.  Here I changed my academic emphasis to Slavic church history.  I planed my thesis to be on the Bulgarian Schism of the 19th century.  My call to Canada dashed my hopes to gain a doctorate at last.

The community in Madison was delightfully rewarding, in part because of its varied ethnic and cultural composition.  My sister Chrysoula came with me to Madison and soon married Vasili.  Before long I had nephews, and guess who would get up first in the morning to care for them: their uncle!

Montreal proved to be a very different proposition.   Certainly there was no time to pursue scholarly objectives  Whatever I had accomplished along those lines, was all I could expect, although I may not have known it at the time.  To begin with, the community was enormous, involving the administration of sacraments -- baptisms, weddings, funerals -- in staggering volume.  Then there was administration itself, for which Ansonia and Chicago Heights and Madison proved to be limited preparation indeed.  I had moved from being the pastor of three small communities to Dean of the entire Montreal community of 80,000 Orthodox Christians.   This was something more than being a priest.  I felt like a mayor or prime minister.  This position was excellent preparation for my later duties as Bishop of San Francisco.  I was able to develop better public relations for the Greek community, was involved in ecumenical activities, and worked even with exiled Greek leftists in the area of social activism.  If I have any leadership qualities they were developed in Montreal.  After four years I was called to put these qualities to use in a higher office.

These matters proceed at their own pace -- and by their own "logic." The intricacies are, quite literally, Byzantine in their subtlety.  His Eminence confided to me that he was proposing me, that is, he was submitting my name, along with two others as protocol requires, to the Patriarchal Synod, which in turn elects. This was not news I could possibly keep from my parents, whose son, against all probability they must have thought, had come so far.  Before long they came to stay with me for a while, to wait out the waiting and of course to be present for the great and high moment.

The waiting proved longer than they had thought. One afternoon, on the occasion of Archbishop Iakovos' visit to his older sister, Mrs. Halas, a lady of great dignity and grace, we were invited to tea. My no-nonsense father had by now grown quite impatient. He first displayed it against the tea.

"What! Are we invalids? Isn't there something a little stronger than this?"

Promptly he was offered some wine, which he found rather more to his liking.  Guessing that this had amused the Archbishop, he carried it one step further.

"And how long are we supposed to be kept in the dark? Is it going to happen or isn't it?"

His Eminence laughed aloud, assuring "Kyrio Manoli" that it would happen soon, that indeed his son would soon be made a Bishop, just to be patient a little while longer.  And so, as they say, it came to pass.   And on the twenty-first day of May, 1978, the Feast of Sts. Constantine, and Helen, whom the Church honors as "Equals of the Apostles," I was admitted to that holy and unbroken succession of the Apostles.

At the time all the Bishops served as Auxiliaries, therefore as Titular Bishops; my initial title was Bishop of Amissos, and my first assignment, for a year, was to the vacant (or, as we say in Church language, "widowed") Diocese of Denver.  The following year, under the scheme of restructuring that returned the Church to the traditional norms, I was elected Bishop of San Francisco. And here, by God's merciful grace, I have now served a full fifteen years.