Philadelphia, PA – On Tuesday evening, the Greek Orthodox community of Philadelphia received a rare and deeply meaningful gift: several sacred relics brought directly from Jerusalem to St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Center City.
Savvas Dahdal, a devoted parishioner of St. George with family roots in Jerusalem, returned from a personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a mission he described as “a duty as a Greek Orthodox Christian—to help bring the community together.” What he brought back was extraordinary: two tiny relics of the True Cross—the actual wood upon which Jesus Christ was crucified—as well as bone fragments of Saint George, Saint John the Baptist, and Saint Sava.
These relics, now enshrined at St. George Cathedral, carry not only deep spiritual significance but also historical and communal weight. St. George, long considered the mother parish of Philadelphia’s Greek-American community, now becomes home to these sacred pieces of Orthodox heritage.
To address questions of authenticity, Dahdal presented two signed and dated letters of certification from the Archbishop of Jerusalem. He also shared that Metropolitan Evangelos of New Jersey had been informed of the relics and granted his blessing for their public veneration.
The relics will be officially displayed and venerated this Sunday, the Third Sunday of Lent—also known as the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross. Father Costa Christo of St. George spoke movingly about the moment:
“The church is humbled and privileged to receive a sacred relic of the actual True Cross, upon which Christ shed His precious and life-giving blood for the salvation and redemption of the cosmos.”
As the faithful prepare to gather this weekend, the arrival of these relics marks a powerful moment in the life of the community—one that connects the history of Jerusalem with the present-day heart of Greek Orthodoxy in Philadelphia.