Bishop Alexei is a Great-schema hieromonk who 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. He was received into the Orthodox faith at the Monastery of Saint Tikhon where he became a monk and lecturer in patristics.
After ten years at the monastery, he went to the Monastery of Karakallou on the Holy Mountain in order to deepen his experience of the monastic life. There, he immersed himself in the life of community and was ordained to the holy priesthood. He also wrote “In Peace Let us Pray to the Lord”, translated several Greek books into English, and edited other books in both Greek and English for publication. For health reasons, he was transferred to a women’s monastery that was also a dependency of Karakallou. There, the local bishop blessed him to be a spiritual father for the community that also served as a parish for many Greeks in the area. At this time, he completed his doctoral dissertation in Greek at the University of Thessaloniki which was later published in Greek and English as “Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy”. He has also engaged in further studies in clinical psychology, but his chief work has been pastoral, building up the parish growing around the monastery and offering one-on-one assistance to those in need through the mystery of holy confession and counseling.
Since 2019, Bishop Alexei has been in residence at the Monastery of Saint Tikhon. During this past year, he has given a talk on the ascetic ethos of Orthodox liturgical art for a music conference at Jewel College, lectures on the Prophet Isaiah at Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary [STOTS], in Alaska for their continuing education programs, a lecture on beauty in Church architecture at the Orthodox Inter-Seminary Movement’s [OISM] latest gathering at STOTS, and sermons in parishes and at the monastery Church.
On Tuesday, November 12, 2019, the Holy Synod of Bishops elected him as Bishop-elect of Bethesda and Auxiliary to the Metropolitan for Stavropegial Institutions. He was consecrated to the episcopacy on January 25, 2020. On March 15, 2022, he was elected as Bishop of Sitka and Alaska and was enthroned at Saint Innocent Cathedral, Anchorage, AK, on March 27, 2022.