Archimandrite Damian Hart
March 7, 2009

Great Schema Archimandrite Damian, aged 77, reposed in the Lord on March 7, 2009, after a courageous struggle with cancer. At the time of his repose, he was abbot of St. Silouan the Athonite Monastery in Ben Lomond, California, under the omophorion of His Grace Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco and Western America, Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Archimandrite Damian was born William King Hart, December 18, 1931, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. He was a U.S. Army veteran, and a graduate of Westminster Choir College, General Theological Seminary, and United States International University. A lifelong teacher, he was headmaster of various Christian schools and president of St. Michael’s Farm for Boys in Picayune, Mississippi.

Archimandrite Damian was instrumental in founding several Orthodox mission churches in the South and two monasteries, including the Orthodox Monastery of the Glorious Ascension in Picayune, and later in Resaca, Georgia. A pioneer of Orthodox monasticism in America, Archimandrite Damian converted to Orthodoxy in 1977, along with Hieromonk Michael Adams, Hierodeacon David, and Igumen John Harwell, all co-founders of the Monastery of the Glorious Ascension. (Fathers Damian and Michael had previously co-founded a teaching order of monastics in the Episcopal Church.) Archbishop Dmitri Royster of Dallas and the South, Orthodox Church in America, ordained Archimandrite Damian as an Orthodox priest on September 23, 1977. He was tonsured to the Great Schema, the most advanced level of Orthodox monasticism, by a representative of Abbot Parthenios and the elders of Saint Paul’s Monastery, in Mount Athos, Greece, on October 23, 1996.
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