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Key figures

Origin and history

The Saint Basile-de-Césaree-et-Saint-Alexis-d'Ugine Orthodox Church, located in Nantes Erdre (Beaujoire), was inaugurated in 2005. It is the fruit of a long community history that began in 1927, when Father Peter (Verdenus), a former Catholic priest converted to the Marian church of Poland, organized the first Orthodox parish in Nantes. This foundation was part of the settlement of former white Russians fleeing the 1917 Revolution, later joined by Greek refugees from Asia Minor after the Turkish Independence War. Unlike other parishes, Nantes was created without the direct initiative of the Paris metropolis, but by a local approach.

After the exclusion of Father Peter, Father Eugene Coulon, a French convert and marshal-ferrant, took the direction of the parish in 1932. The services were then celebrated in a chapel set up in his house, then in a rented room on rue Galileo. During the German occupation, parish activity ceased temporarily, but the place was maintained. After the war, owing to lack of resources, the offices were only provided on an ad hoc basis by priests from Paris. In 1959 Father André Bredeau was appointed rector, serving both the Russian and Greek communities.

In 2001, the community decided to build a permanent place of worship in the face of the precarious location. Two Russian donors offered a prefabricated wooden church in Rodniki, Russia, inspired by traditional buildings. The 56 tons of materials, transported in 2002, were stored at the major Catholic seminary in Nantes before being mounted between 2004 and 2005 on land made available by the town hall. The chapel, in the larch of Siberia, was consecrated in August 2005, supplemented in 2006 by a parish house built by a Saint Petersburg company.

The Russian-style church with chestnut cupolas and a Nantaise slate roof houses frescoes by Louis Roger and Ludmila Titchenkova. It serves a diverse community from France, Eastern Europe, Greece and the Middle East. Originally attached to the archdiocese of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe (Daru Street, Paris), the parish joined in 2019 the Vicariat of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis, remaining faithful to the patriarchate of Constantinople after a vote by the faithful.

Today, the church radiates on a vast territory including the Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire, Vendée and Charente-Maritime. It symbolizes the permanence of Orthodox traditions in France, as well as being part of the Nazi religious landscape, close to other Christian places of worship. The offices are mainly celebrated in French, reflecting its local anchor and its openness to the faithful of various origins.

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