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PANOS GINIERES, Priest

The Rev. Panos Ginieres died on Good Friday (April 9, 1926) at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Boston, MA. He was born in Lagadia, Olympia, Greece and immigrated to America about the age of and settled in our City where he became employed at various occupations, helping and serving the Greek Community of Lowell. He was, so to speak, an Integral part of the life of the Greek Community, which will remember him for many years to come as one who was everywhere present and always willing and eager to do whatever he could to help anyone in need. Laborers and business men, public, - school children and college students, professionals and merchants alike, each one found in the person of the late Rev. Ginieres a ready helper. Widows and orphans, the poor and the sick and the abandoned, all found the doors of City Hall and the hospitals open to them, thanks to him.

Panos Ginieres would indeed have offered greater service to the Greek Community had he remained in the folds of the Greek Orthodox Faith. Unfortunately, having studied In a Protestant theological school, he became a member of' the Methodist Church and spent most of his brief life preaching the Protestant message in our Community. He returned to the Orthodox Faith too late, being ordained into the Priesthood by a Russian Orthodox Bishop whose canonical status was disputed by the Russian Orthodox Church in America.

The loss of so many precious years, which he was to realize and regret, and his questionable status in the Orthodox Church, and moreover, the terrible illness which plagued him for two years, brought on his untimely death. And so that morning, when the Great Teacher of Nazareth was dying on the Cross, Panos Ginieres gave up the spirit. But the Teacher must have kept a place in His Father's House for this tireless worker of charity.

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, T was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me … Truly, I say to you, as you did It to one the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (Matth. 25:35-40).

The many prayers of the poor, the sick and the orphans, i'll ascend to the Almighty in the golden urns of' the Angels, and the restless spirit of Panos Ginieres will at last find eternal rest at the feet of Jesus.