Orthodox Christian dating in Wales

Orthodox Christians in Wales

Cardiff first, because Cardiff has the history. Greek ships came to the coal ports of South Wales through the nineteenth century, and by the 1870s enough Greeks lived in Cardiff for a meeting: on 18 December 1873, organised by Timothy Hatherly, an Englishman ordained an Orthodox priest in Constantinople, the seamen resolved to build a church near the docks and dedicate it to St Nicholas, patron of sailors. For thirty years they used the Norwegian church by the port and a shed; in 1903 the Ecumenical Patriarchate recognised the community by a letter that the archdiocese still keeps and sent Fr Ioannis Georgiades as its first priest; in 1905 the community leased a plot from the Marquess of Bute for ninety-nine years, in 1906 the church went up, in 1915 the community building beside it with the Greek school below and the priest's flat above, and on 24 April 1919 Archbishop Cyril III of Cyprus presided at the official opening. Two hundred Greek ships a year called at Cardiff then, the parish's history says, and in the Second World War, with Greek ships blocked in the port, the Greek population doubled. The church on Greek Church Street is a listed building, still the parish of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain for Cardiff and South Wales, with Mattins at half past nine and the Liturgy at eleven, in Greek and English.

Then the Romanians, the newest and, by parish count, now the second Orthodox presence in Wales. The parish of All Saints and St Stephen in Cardiff was founded in February 2009 at the request of the city's Romanians and of Fr Sorin Chirilă, first served the Liturgy in March 2009 in the Anglican church of St Dyfrig and St Samson in Grangetown, lent by the Archbishop of Wales, and was officially opened on 14 June 2009, All Saints Sunday, with the Romanian ambassador present; until April 2011 its priest also served the Romanians of Bristol once a month. The Romanian archdiocese now lists it on Cowbridge Road West, with two patronal days, All Saints Sunday and 27 December, and a second Welsh parish, St Neagoe Basarab, in St Gabriel's Church in Brynmill, Swansea.

Then the west and the converts. The Greek Orthodox Church of the Three Hierarchs and St Cybi in Lampeter worships in Soar Chapel on Victoria Terrace, in what its own page calls a very rural area of mid-Wales; its members are of many nationalities and Orthodox backgrounds, its services are primarily in English with some Welsh, Greek and Romanian, sung to Byzantine chant, with Vespers most Wednesdays, and in February 2026 Archbishop Nikitas came to serve there. The same priest serves the community of Aberystwyth in St Padarn's, the Anglican church of Llanbadarn Fawr, and the community of Ss Zacharias and Elizabeth in Swansea has a Liturgy once a month in St Mary's Church in the city centre.

Then the north, which is Welsh-speaking and Russian by jurisdiction. The Diocese of Sourozh, the Moscow Patriarchate's diocese in Britain, has a Welsh deanery under Archimandrite Deiniol: the Church of All Saints of Wales on Manod Road in Blaenau Ffestiniog, the one church in the north that is the community's own, and the communities of St Deiniol of Bangor in Capel Emaus on Love Lane and of Wrexham in Capel Jerwsalem on Penymaes Avenue, both in former Welsh nonconformist chapels.

The people filling these communities have been counted, though not here. The Orthodox Studies Institute surveyed twenty American parishes across six jurisdictions and reported, of the converts received since 2013, that two thirds were under forty at their reception, that people in their thirties outnumbered every other decade, and that 44 percent were single when they came in.

Wales was not among the twenty, and the survey describes its west and north better than its south: Lampeter's page says its members are of many nationalities and backgrounds and that its services are in English first, and the deanery in the north is a Welsh priest serving Welsh people in Welsh chapels; Cardiff is a shipping community's grandchildren and a Romanian parish of the last fifteen years. The unmarried Orthodox thirty-year-old in Wales is as likely to be a convert in a chapel in Ceredigion as a Greek in Butetown, and the two are two and a half hours apart by road.

Three jurisdictions are on this page. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain has Cardiff, Swansea, Lampeter and Aberystwyth; the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has Cardiff and Swansea; the Diocese of Sourozh has Blaenau Ffestiniog, Bangor and Wrexham. The Antiochian Archdiocese of the British Isles lists no Welsh parish in its directory, and whether the Russian Church Abroad or the Serbian Church keep a community in Wales was not checked.

Where the community gathers

Wales's Orthodox gather in Cardiff and Swansea, in Ceredigion, and in the north.

Distances that decide everything

The Orthodox year in Wales

Dating across jurisdictions, and with converts

Six kilometres separate the two jurisdictions of Cardiff, two and a half hours the coast from Ceredigion, a day the south from the north. The cana.love form was written for exactly those distances, and the quickest way to understand it is to interrogate it.

Meeting safely

• A request for money from someone you have not met in person is, on cana.love, grounds for a report, and the person who asked is removed for good.
• Meet first in a public place, let a friend know where you are, and keep the conversation on the site until the decision to move it is yours and not the other person's.

Reviews, reports and appeals are explained on the guidelines page.

Common questions