Office of the Episcopacy

His Grace, +Bishop ALEXEI, was born in Dover, Delaware on February 24, 1965 and raised in a pious Christian household. As a child, he attended Roman Catholic parochial school. As an adult, he received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Franklin and Marshal College, a master’s degree in religion from the University of Chicago, a master of divinity from Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, and a doctorate in patristic studies and psychology from the University of Thessaloniki. Vladyka was ordained to the diaconate in 1996, to the priesthood in 2001, and to the episcopate on January 25, 2020. On March 15, 2022, he was elected as Bishop of Sitka and Alaska and was enthroned at Saint Innocent of Irkust Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Anchorage, Alaska, on March 27^th of the same year. 

His Grace began his monastic life as a riassophore monk at Saint Tikhon’s Russian Orthodox Monastery in 1990 and later taught courses in the spiritual life and the ascetic fathers at Saint Tikhon’s Theological Seminary. In 1995, he went to the Monastery of Karakallou on the Holy Mountain in order to deepen his experience of the monastic life. There, Vladyka immersed himself in the life of the community and was ordained to the holy priesthood.

Vladyka’s Athonite years were quite blessed. He thrived on the daily evening vigils in the cell and in the church, the simple joys of the common life like gathering the olives as a brotherhood and saying the prayer. He worked in the kitchen during the day, chanted, read the psalter, and served as a deacon by night. Having learned modern and byzantine Greek sufficiently well, Vladyka also read at the formal trapeza. He would frequently lead the Byzantine chanting in Church during the week and would serve as the representative of Karakallou to other Athonite monasteries for their patronal feasts.  Vladyka especially loved serving the Divine Liturgy by candlelight in the small Athonite chapels with three or four fathers in the middle of the night. In 2021, Vladyka had the joy of presiding at the patronal feast at Karakallou where he ordained two men to the diaconate and two men to the holy priesthood.

His Grace has translated a number of books on the spiritual life into English, such as Anestis Keselopoulos’s  The Passions and the Virtues according to Saint Gregory Palamas  (2004.), Fr. John Romanides’s Patristic Theology (2008), Dionysios Farasiotis’s The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisio (2008),  Father Isaac’s The Life of Elder Paisios of Mount Athos (2012). He has also written two major works: In Peace Let us Pray to the Lord (2001/2014) and  Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (2011), both of which he later translated into modern Greek.

In 2018, Vladyka returned from Greece to the United States on His Beatitude +Metropolitan TIKHON’s invitation and with the blessing of his abbot, Archimandrite Philotheos, in order to serve the Orthodox Church in America as a bishop.  Since being ruling hierarch of the Diocese of Sitka and Alaska, His Grace has established a vision for the Diocese that by the grace of God will see the clergy of the diocese supported spiritually and financially, the faith of the laity reignited, and the Church’s foundational mission to be the advocate and protector of her people reinspired. Modeling the future of the Diocese founded on the past missionary efforts of Saint Innocent of Alaska, His Grace has begun an endowment that will better equip our clergy to proclaim the Gospel in the communities under their care. Further supporting this vision for the Diocese, Saint Herman’s Seminary has restored an Alaskan-centric curriculum that prepares future clergy for a life in the Church within an Alaskan context; emphasizing the importance of a full liturgical life, language, and culture. By looking to the holy fathers during the golden age of Orthodoxy in Alaska, His Grace is working towards restoring the faith, zeal, and holiness of the Diocese that is the birthplace of the Church in North America.