St. Nicholas Orthodox Chapel

If you wish to experience the ancient Rites of Christianity, please visit any Orthodox Parish in the St. Louis and Metro East on the Illinois side of the River.. Belleville is 12 Miles from St. Louis, Missouri, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. It is difficult for persons in America to realize the Eastern Orthodox Church is the 2nd largest body in Christendom, with about 240 million Orthodox Christians world wide, because in North America there are less than 6.5 million Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox Church is a Church of great antiquity, dating back to the early Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, Greece, Alexandria and Rome. The Churches St. Paul wrote his letters to (Corinth, Thessalonica, Galatia,etc.) still exist today as the Greek Orthodox Church. It was in the city of Antioch that the term "Christian" was first used. Today the Church of Antioch continues to exist as the Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem still serves as guardian over most of the holy shrines in the Holy Land. Our own Ukrainian Orthodox Church was established by Saints Cyril & Methodius in 988 when they carried the gospel from Greece to the Slavic people starting in Kiev where our Patriarch presides.

The presence of the Orthodox Church can be verified not only through the early Christian writings, but through the secular history books as well.