Orthodox Churches in Pennsylvania

Orthodoxy grew in Pennsylvania with immigrants of the late 1800s who worked in its mines and steel mills. The mission of the priest St. Alexis Toth helped bring thousands of Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic immigrants and numerous parishes into Orthodoxy. St. John's Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Mayfield was founded in 1891 as a Byzantine Catholic church and has been Orthodox since 1903. It hosted the First All-American Sobor in 1907 and is the oldest parish in the Eastern American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Pittsburgh drew immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Arab world, and around 1900 it was a hub of American Orthodoxy, with ethnic churches often built near one another, as in Carnegie. Pittsburgh's cathedrals include Holy Trinity (Serbian), Saint George (Antiochian) and St. Nicholas (Greek). The American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese held its first council in Pittsburgh in 1937, was canonically established in 1938, and made Johnstown its seat in 1950 with Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

St. Tikhon's Monastery at Waymart, founded in 1905 with help from St. John's parishioners, is regarded as the first Orthodox monastery established in North America, and pilgrims gather there each Memorial Day weekend. St. Stephen Orthodox Cathedral in Philadelphia, the Orthodox Church in America's diocesan cathedral for eastern Pennsylvania, traces its roots to a congregation founded in 1909 as St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church. Other monasteries include the Monastery of the Transfiguration at Ellwood City, Serbian monasteries at Youngwood and Springboro, and a Georgian one at Ashley.