Archbishop Nikon (Alexis of Grève)

Archbishop of the Orthodox Church in America in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Patriarchate of Constantinople then of Moscow in 1945.

A graduate of the Tiflis Cadet Corps and the Pavlov military school in Saint Petersburg, he participated in the First World War and the Civil War on the side of the Whites. He reached the rank of colonel.

After the defeat, he emigrated to France, where he decided to devote his life to God. In 1925, he entered the Saint-Serge Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris.

In 1927, he was ordained hierodeacon under the name Nikon. He is assigned to the Saint-Alexandre-Nevsky Cathedral in Paris.

In 1936, he participated in the consecration of the monument dedicated to the soldiers of the Russian expeditionary force who fell on the French front in Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand (Marne).

In 1947, having become a bishop, Nikon left for the United States under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church Outside of America. He became Bishop of Toronto in 1952 and was named Archbishop of Tokyo in 1960. In 1962, he returned to the United States to become the assistant of Metropolitan Leonty.

On the death of the Metropolitan, Archbishop Nikon became vicar of the Metropolitan of America and Canada. He retired in 1979 in New York.