Saint Peter the Aleut's Pan-Orthodox Youth of Canada
In the winter of 2003, a youth retreat took place in Montréal. This event brought together dozens of young Orthodox people from Québec and Ottawa, highlighting the desire for more common activities held among the youths of the various parishes of different backgrounds that comprise the Orthodox reality in North America.
With this in mind and with the encouragement of Fr. Lambros Kamperidis (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese), a group of Orthodox youth from the Ottawa-Montréal region met on Canada Day 2004 and established the Orthodox Youth of Canada. The group is under the blessing of the Clergy Association of Québec. Subsequently, Saint Peter the Aleut, a Native-American Orthodox youth from Alaska, was chosen unanimously as patron saint of our group. We always carry out our efforts under the guidance of a priest: our first spiritual director was Fr. Lambros, whose initiative led to the birth of this vibrant group. As of this year, we welcome Fr. John Tkachuk as our new spiritual director.
Our aim is to hold common events to talk and learn more about our Faith and learn about the different traditions within the Orthodox Church. Our group is mostly geared toward senior high school, college and university youth.
The youth is the Church of tomorrow. Therefore, we seek to promote a better understanding of each other by providing an environment where personal relationships can develop. We also seek to provide a better understanding of the Faith we share as Orthodox Christians, as well as of the different traditions to which we belong.
To this end, we hold three types of events. First, casual meetings that allow young people to be themselves in a Christian spirit, sharing a meal or worshipping together at different locations. Second, to nourish the souls and minds of our youth, we are constantly seeking priests, theologians and other mature Christians to give informal talks on various topics of relevance to the youth. Finally, we hold two one-day retreats a year.
The next retreat is on August 4, 2007. For details, click
here.
Our efforts cannot come to fruition without your help. We hope you will get involved in preparing our events, even if you are not a speaker. We ask all youth to come participate, to represent their communities and get to know each other.
If your parish priest is available, please let us know and we will send him a list of topics to choose from to talk to us about and set a date.
If your parish would also like to host a particular event and/or offer its assistance in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us at saintpeterthealeut@yahoo.ca.
