Father Nicola Yanney

Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Father Nicola Yanney

The Equal of Martyrdom is an audio documentary by Father Andrew Damick concerning about the ministry of Father Nicola Yanney. The documentary is accompanied by nine other recordings about aspects of Father Nicola’s life, as well as audio recordings of pilgrimage events.

Born in Ottoman Syria, Nicola Yanney immigrated to America at age 19. He eventually settled in a tiny rural town outside of Kearney with his family. Here, the family remained for some years, until the tragic death of Nicola’s wife during childbirth. After mourning for a long time, Nicola was encouraged by the then Archimandrite Raphael and the small community of the faithful in the Kearney area – who had just established a church, St. George the Great Martyr – to travel to New York to study for ordination. In 1904 Archimandrite Raphael was elevated to bishop, and on that Palm Sunday, Father Nicola became the first to have Bishop Raphael’s hands laid on him. Upon his return to Nebraska, he moved his family to Kearney to be in the heart of his flock.

Bishop Basil of Wichita describes the duties given to Fr. Nicola: “Shortly after his consecration to the sacred episcopacy a century ago – on March 13th, 1904 – Saint Raphael of Brooklyn performed his first priestly ordination, the ordained being a young widower, Nicola Yanney, a native of the tiny village of Fi’eh in north Lebanon, living with his children on a farm in Gibbon, Nebraska. Father Nicola was ordained [on April 3rd, 1904] for what was then the westernmost parish of Saint Raphael’s diocese, Saint George’s Church in Kearney, Nebraska, but he was given pastoral responsibility for an area that is nearly identical to the boundaries of our newly created Diocese of Mid-America. Father Nicola’s parish stretched from the Canadian border in the north, to the Mexican border in the south, and from the Mississippi River in the east, to the Rocky Mountains in the west. It is Fr. Nicola who, as a circuit riding priest headquartered in Kearney, followed the example of his spiritual father, Saint Raphael, and visited Orthodox Christians in the scattered towns, villages and isolated farm lands throughout America’s Heartland.”

In 1918 the Spanish Flu came to Kearney. The city was lucky, as not many people suffered. But a second wave of the disease struck harder, and the city ordered a quarantine. Since the faithful could not come to church, Fr. Nicola took the Church to them, one by one, house by house, so that they could receive the Body and Blood of Christ. And it was in this way that Fr. Nicola would repose in Christ on October 29, 1918, after contracting the Spanish Flu himself a week earlier.

He has not yet been added to the calendar of saints of the Orthodox Church. But we can pray that in time the Church will officially honor the impact that he has had on the faithful, and glorify him as a Passion-Bearer.