Orthodoxy, in the Southern Hemisphere, was established on its own ground with the erection of the Church of the Holy Trinity in the city of Sydney. On the 29th of May 1898, the cornerstone of Orthodoxy was laid in the fifth continent. The Church of the Holy Trinity was founded on the ill-fated day of the fall of Constantinople on the 29th May 1453. This day was selected, by the faithful pioneers, in order to officially extend the boundaries of Hellenism and Orthodoxy in the Antipodes, as an optimistic resistance to the fall of the City. And since then Holy Trinity has continued to resist pressure for 100 years and has remained impregnable. Greek Orthodoxy had already acquired its own overseas land, with the erection in 1864 of the Holy Trinity in the city of New Orleans, in the state of Louisiana in the U.S.A.
The same consecration. Coincidence? or the holy tradition of the Greek Orthodox to begin their founding activities in the name of the Holy Trinity?
The two Holy Churches, cultural mosaics in the civilised mosaic of America hence comprise the boundless universal Orthodox Hellenism. The Greek State should consider these churches and should accord them the same honour as is extended to the preserved cultural monuments in the state Greece.
The Church of the Holy Trinity of Sydney, with its one hundred years of liturgical functions, is a living challenge for the contemporaries who shoulder the responsibility of perpetuating the cultural heritage of this institution of the community. For the thousands of immigrants who work, suffer and feel anguish, the Holy Trinity Church has a broader social and religious importance. Especially for those who were married and had their children baptised in the historic Holy Church and who remember the Holy domain with nostalgia and emotion. For the coming generations, it will be a place of reference to their history and their Community Fathers, to their cultural identify and their roots.
The history of the organised Greek Community in Sydney begins with the laying of the foundation stone of the Holy Trinity, both the Church and the School were the threads which wove the community institution which moves our migrant history successfully into the future.
