Diocese: Bulgarian Diocese
Deanery: Bulgarian Diocese Chancery
Address
6301 W Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, California 90048
Parish Contacts
Fort Wayne, IN
Lay Leadership
Directions
St John the Baptist Romanian Orthodox Church is located in W Los Angeles, CA, approximately 15 miles west of downtown Los Angeles at the intersection of Olympic Blvd and Crescent Heights, sharing the same holy grounds with the Anglican Parish of Church of Our Savior and the Holy Apostles..
Schedule of Services
Liturgical languages are English and Romanian.
12:00 PM Divine Liturgy followed by refreshments in the Church Parish Hall.
Sunday Morning
Confessions are heard before Liturgy and by appointment with Fr John.
Confessions
HOLY WEEK: Services are held at 7 PM on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and EASTER at Midnight. CHRISTMAS DAY follows Sunday Schedule.
For a schedule of other services or to arrange Baptisms, Marriages, Memorials, Thanksgiving services, etc., please call the church at 323-309-5669.
Parish Background
On August 29, 1982, a small group of faithful immigrants from Romania gathered around Rev. Fr. Gheorghe Mircea Niculescu to officially establish a new Orthodox parish, serving the community around West Los Angeles in the Romanian Orthodox tradition. Fr. Mircea was a well-known poet and man of letters in his native Romania and an outspoken critic of the Romanian Communist regime.
St. John the Baptist Romanian Orthodox Church officiated its first Divine Liturgy on September 3, 1982 as a parish of the Orthodox Church in America, Bulgarian Diocese under the omophore of his Eminence Archbishop Kyrill of Pittsburgh and Toledo. After the untimely death of Fr. Mircea in 1989, the parish persisted with the help of Fr. Cornel Avramescu, Rector of St. Mary Romanian Orthodox Church in Anaheim.
On April 1990, Fr. Remus Bibart immigrated to Los Angeles to assume rectorship of our church. In 1998 he received tonsure as Hieromonk Nikodim, and was soon elevated to the rank of Archimandrite by His Eminence, Archbishop Kyrill. On September 2001, after a full decade of faithful service in our community, Archim. Nikodim received canonical release from the OCA to serve henceforth in the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in the Americas.
Since Archim. Nikodim’s departure, the parish has been served in turn by the Rev. Viorel Visovan, Hieromonk Teodosie Marius Bordieanu, and VRev. Dumitru Ionescu. In October 2010, the parish welcomed Rev. John Beal, his spouse Popodia Medea and their daughter Magdalen Maria Theresa. Fr. John is the first clergyman to serve the parish in his own native English.
A native Californian who found and watered his Orthodox faith in the San Francisco Bay Area, Fr. John hopes to enrich his parish with the greater Orthodox Tradition as he learned it in Northern Californian OCA parishes, at his Alma Mater St. Vladimir’s seminary and among a wide network of Orthodox communities worldwide.
Now that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached at St. John’s to all comers in both the English and Romanian languages, we look forward to a season of spiritual and demographic growth and enrichment under the pastoral care of Fr. John. La multi ani!