1957 – 2025
Father Nicholas Zachariadis was, both by nature and by nurture, dedicated to the union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. His mother’s name was Epiphania, who was Roman Catholic, and his father, (NAME), belonged to the Orthodox Church. Mixed marriages at that time in Egypt—and in the Middle East more generally—were not as common as they are today.
Raised in a church steeped in history and culture in the great city of Alexandria, Fr. Nicholas came to see his life as a bridge between the faith of his mother and the church of his father.
He was born in Port Said, Egypt. According to family lore, the sound of gunfire could be heard in the streets around the hospital where he was born — the beginning of Nasser’s revolution. As a consequence of that upheaval, many families were forced to flee Egypt. Fr. Nicholas’ parents chose Australia as their new home. They arrived impoverished, a change that weighed heavily on his father. The loss of wealth, home, and social standing left deep and lasting wounds.
Compounding the trauma of displacement, Nicholas’ mother died soon after the family’s move to Australia. It is not surprising, then, that the young Nicholas turned to religion as a source of stability. In his last years of high school he attended an Anglican church in Melbourne. At university he returned to his Catholic roots and ultimately entered the Order of Preachers (the OPs) as a novice.
By 1980 he had been greatly encouraged by the late Fr. Peter Knowles OP, then Master of Mannix College at the University of Melbourne. As Fr. Nicholas’ spiritual father, Fr. Peter helped awaken in him the vocation to embrace his identity as an Eastern Catholic and to pursue that vocation in monastic life.
In June 1990, having already taken solemn vows and with the support of his religious superiors, he was ordained a priest by Most Rev. Ivan Prosko of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Australia.
Fr. Nicholas sought not only to be an Eastern Christian but to live as an Eastern monk. He dreamed of founding an English-speaking community, accessible to all, devoted to the fullest possible expression of the divine services of the Byzantine tradition. By a fortunate coincidence, he met two other Australian men who shared that vision. They moved to America, where Eastern Catholic communities were larger and offered greater opportunities for such a foundation.
After a rocky start in 1994, these three were joined by two Americans. In 1995 the nascent community was recognized as a Public Association of the Christian Faithful by the Ruthenian bishop of Van Nuys. In 1996 the novice monastery moved to its new home in Newberry Springs, California.
Fr. Nicholas immersed himself in the official Catholic–Orthodox dialogue. He was elected the first Abbot of Holy Resurrection Monastery on the eve of Mid-Pentecost, 2000.
Throughout his life Fr. Nicholas remained committed to building bridges between traditions, to monastic renewal, and to making the richness of the Byzantine liturgical life accessible in English. He is remembered for his dedication, his compassionate care for souls, and his tireless work toward Christian unity.