Our Clergy
St Basil Orthodox Church is a parish of the
Orthodox Church in America, Diocese of the South.
Our Primatial Bishop
Metropolitan Tikhon has served as the first hierarch of the Orthodox Church in America since fall of 2012. Metropolitan Tikhon has the task not only of serving as the ruling bishop of Washington, DC, but also of coordinating the work of the OCA dioceses in accordance with the canons of the Church. Through His Beatitude, our local Church maintains communion with the other Orthodox churches around the world.
Our Ruling Bishop
Archbishop Alexander (Golitzin) was elected Bishop of Dallas, the South and the Bulgarian Diocese on March 30, 2016. He is the shepherd and overseer of our parish, as well as a member of the Holy Synod of the OCA. His Eminence holds degrees from UC Berkeley, St Vladimir’s Seminary, and Oxford University (D.Phil.), and is professor emeritus of Marquette University.
Our rector
Father Andrew Cannon, his wife, M. Melissa, and their children have been with us since August 2017, first as assistant and now as rector. Fr Andrew graduated from St Vladimir’s Seminary in 2016, and Abp Alexander ordained him to the Holy Priesthood at St Basil in March 2018. Fr Andrew is available to meet most times Tuesdays-Saturdays: reach out via email on our website to schedule a time and place!
Our Founding Pastor
Father Peter Robichau arrived in Wilmington with his family in the summer of 2009 to assist “a few families with a new mission effort in the region.” By June of 2010, he relocated to Wilmington to serve as the community’s first pastor. As a “mission priest,” he worked full-time professionally while guiding our community from borrowed space (with a maximum capacity of 20 people) in the basement of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church to our current 7.5 acres on Wilmington’s “North Side.” In August 2019 he was reassigned as Secretary of the Diocese of the South, and he and his family currently reside in South Carolina.
“See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of the people also be; even as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”