Thursday, November 11, 2010

Groups battle for St. Nicholas Brotherhood name

Two opposing factions in a decades-old Orthodox Christian church in Phoenixville have given Common Pleas Court Judge Edward Griffith a task not unlike that of the old television game show “To Tell the Truth.”

That is, to answer the question: “Will the real members of the St. Nicholas Brotherhood please stand up?”

As it stands, the two groups both argue they alone hold title to that designation.

In litigation filed in 2009, one group of longtime members of the Holy Ghost Orthodox Christian Church asserts that the church’s current board of directors were acting as “impostors” while claiming to represent the brotherhood.

An attorney for the dissidents, some of whom have been excommunicated from the church, accused the church of engaging in identity theft for usurping the authority of the true brotherhood.

But the church directors contend that the dissidents have manufac

tured the dispute because they object to a proposed plan to sell a portion of church property in Phoenixville for use as a senior housing project.

For decades it was widely accepted that the church and the brotherhood’s leadership were one and the same until the property sale issue arose in 2008, their attorneys told Griffith.

The judge heard two days of testimony in the civil lawsuit last week and will issue a decision lateer. Attorneys for both sides have been given time to sum up their cases in legal briefs in advance of Griffith’s ruling.

At stake is the authority to sell about two acres of the church property to St. Peter’s Village, a nonprofit senior housing project that was the subject of hearings before Phoenixville Borough Council two years ago.

If the dissident group prevails, the plans to sell would be derailed; if the church board wins, the sale and development would likely go through.

But the litigation would also settle the question for the future as to who exactly controls the land on which Holy Ghost Church stands.

The property at the intersection of Starr and Bridge streets along the banks of the Schuylkill River is somewhat of a green oasis in the urban expanse of Phoenixville. In addition to church buildings, there are play fields, lawns and woodlands on the property that was given to the church by the Reeves Family, owners of Phoenix Steel, in the 1930s.

The church’s membership had been asked to leave its former home in Mont Clare, Montgomery County, by the Roman Catholic Church there and was forced to hold services in other churches. The Reeves Family gave about 22 acres to the church, but in return for a “solemn promise” that it would only be used as a church.

The property was deeded for 99 years to a nominally separate organization, the St. Nicholas Brotherhood. The Brotherhood owned the land, and Holy Ghost ran the church.

But, according to court documents, and testimony and arguments before Griffith last Wednesday and Thursday, the practical differences between the two groups were vague.

Members of the brotherhood were all members of the church. There were no bylaws adopted by the brotherhood to lay out how members would be added or subtracted, or what the procedures were for calling meetings of the group.

That did not seem to pose any problems, however, for decades. Members of the church board who testified in court last week, including board president John Ely of Schwenksville and John Bilian of Gilbertsville, said the longtime pastor at the church had told them that the board of the church was identical to the board of the Brotherhood.

Under questioning from Lance Nelson, of the West Chester firm of MacElree Harvey, representing the church and its board, the board members recalled meetings that were held in 1976 to discuss the possible sale of two acres of the land to the local Moose Lodge. Although the meetings were billed as joint session by Holy Ghost and the St. Nicholas Brotherhood, no one objected to the authority of the church board to handle the possible sale.

The proposal fell through on a tie vote.

Ely told Griffith that as the church began discussing the possibility of selling land to St. Peter’s in 2008, once again no one objected to the notion that the church board, acting as the board of the brotherhood, had the authority to put forth the sale — although there were those who opposed the proposal itself.

That issue was not raised until March 2008, when a dissident member, MaryAnne Bradford, produced an unsigned copy of the lease of the land to the Brotherhood. They appeared at council meetings to oppose the application process.

Later, the church filed a suit in Common Pleas Court to have the deed voided. But Griffith, who was assigned the case, denied their attempt.

In May 2009, the church board met and adopted what it termed bylaws for the Brotherhood. But a few weeks prior to that meeting, a longtime member of the church, Joseph Orosz, convened himself a meeting of the brotherhood. Orosz contended that he was the sole surviving member of the original brotherhood board, and wished to reconstitute that group.

Afraid that if he went against the church he would be excommunicated and forbidden from being buried in the church cemetery, he appointed Bradford, a descendant of one of the other original brotherhood members, to the board and then resigned his position. Bradford, in turn, appointed two other women to the board.

That group, represented by attorney Scott Withers of the firm of Lamb McErlane of West Chester, filed suit against the church in 2009, asking Griffith to prohibit the church from acting in the interests of the brotherhood. It was Withers who argued on Wednesday that the church was guilty of identity theft.

The church board members, Ely, Bilian, Alex Bruno, Michael Kost, Mark Samilenko and Jeanne Bass, were named as defendants in the suit. They in turn asked Griffith to take into account the fact that the church and Brotherhood were seen to be one and the same for years and to grant it authority to act as the owner of the property.

“Isn’t that the issue?” Griffith asked at one point in the proceedings. “Who represents the Brotherhood?”
 
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