PRIOR THEODORE
FOUNDER OF THE HOLY MONASTERY OF OUR LADY & SAINT LAURENCE & AUTHOR OF THE RULE
Father Prior, formerly a monastic in the Roman Catholic Church and subsequently a deacon and monastic in the Episcopal Church, entered the Orthodox Church in 2002.
After several years as a novice monk living in the world under obedience to an elder monk, he was tonsured Rasophore monk in 2007 by Bishop (Now Metropolitan) JOSEPH. The year before, he graduated from the Antiochian St Stephen’s Program and House of Studies.
During 2008 – 2010, Father spent time at two small Orthodox monasteries (one Eastern, one Western). Then, in early 2010, he accepted an invitation to move to Ohio and pursue his vocation there in a Greek Orthodox monastery whose observance was modeled on the Rule of St Benedict.
In August of 2010, Father was tonsured to the Great Schema (Habit) by His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh, receiving the name “Theodore” (after St Theodore of Tarsus , Abp. of Canterbury). In February of 2012, he was ordained subdeacon by His Eminence Metropolitan Savas. Tragically, later that year the monastery became unable to sustain itself and voluntarily closed.
In November of 2012 Father arrived at the Retreat Center as a “refugee” and, soon after, he became the Guest Master at the Retreat Center. Shortly after the foundation of the monastic community on September 14,2013, The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he was elected as the first Prior (superior).
Father was ordained to the Holy Diaconate on September 27, 2015, by His Grace Bishop JOHN, at St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and officially assigned to the Monastery by His Eminence, Metropolitan JOSEPH.