About our parish
Our Holy Trinity Parish began with only a handful of families in 1910 when our Church was a small structure on West Street.
Outgrowing that facility, our journey took us to our second Church at the corner of 40th and Pennsylvania Street in 1960. Our present, beautiful Byzantine structure was built in 2008 to serve our ever-expanding Parish community. In 2018, His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas proclaimed Holy Trinity Church as a Cathedral. Today, we are an active, vibrant congregation with over 500 households comprised of life-long Orthodox Christians and people who chose Orthodoxy as adults, with organizations and activities for parishioners of all ages.
History
By the beginning of the 20th century, a small community of Greeks had settled in Indianapolis. These early immigrants were mainly young men from Tripoli and other villages of the central Peloponnese who, wanting to worship God as they had learned from their parents and their ancestors, all the way back to the Apostles, rented a space on the third floor of 27 South Meridian Street. They set up an altar and iconostasion every Sunday for Greek Orthodox Christian services—meeting until 1903. In 1905, they requested a priest from Greece, and dedicated their Parish to the Holy Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; one God.
On January 29, 1910, the formal charter of incorporation of the Holy Trinity Parish was filed with the Secretary of State of Indiana, and the community continued to meet for Divine Services at South Meridian until 1914. The Parish purchased a house at 213 North West Street to accommodate the growing congregation, with Sanctuary on the first floor and the priest’s residence on the second floor. The community, having exchanged property, used proceeds from the deal subsequently to build a brick Church at 231 North West Street.
As the community continued to grow, so did the space needed for worship. The Holy Trinity Parish broke ground at 40th Street and Pennsylvania on August 23, 1959, and moved in on July 31, 1960, with Archbishop Iakovos participating in the dedication of the new Church. On May 31 and June 1, 1980, the Church was consecrated. During the Divine Services, His Eminence, Archbishop Iakovos, enshrined within the Altar Table the relics of three saints: Saint Anastasia, a Roman citizen who assisted to the needs of Christians in the catacombs; Saint Theodore, the new martyr; and Bishop Tyron of Salonika. In the following decade, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, along with other Orthodox Churches, received a steady stream of converts from other religious communities. Orthodox communities had long been welcoming converts through marriage, but this movement of converts of spiritual conscience to Orthodoxy in America was unprecedented.
Following the continued growth of the community, in 1998, Holy Trinity Parish acquired its present property at Shelborne and 106th Street in Carmel. The groundbreaking for the new Church and campus took place on September 30, 2006 and, on Christmas Eve of 2008, the Holy Trinity community celebrated the first Divine Services in the Church. Over three phases, the iconography was painted in the Altar, Nave, and Narthex of the Church, and, in February 2018, the final phase was completed. At his Archpastoral visit in September 2018, His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas of Detroit announced that Holy Trinity was to be elevated to the dignity of Cathedral.