Orthodox Churches in Virginia

The first Greek Orthodox immigrants arrived in the Richmond area in 1896, according to a 2017 Virginia House of Delegates resolution. In 1898 John Gretes, acknowledged as Norfolk's first Greek immigrant, settled in the city. A priest who traveled from Maryland had served Norfolk's Greek residents irregularly before the community's first priest celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Norfolk in 1911. A 2009 state-by-state list of first Orthodox parishes names a Greek parish in Norfolk, dated 1911, as Virginia's first.

The Norfolk parish, now Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral, held the first services in its new church on Granby Street in 1955. In Richmond, the Greek Orthodox parish of Saints Constantine and Helen was founded in 1917 and held its first service in a rented building on West Broad Street. Its church was destroyed by fire in 1957, and the congregation completed a new house of worship on Malvern Avenue in 1961.

St. Mary Orthodox Church in Falls Church was founded by six Romanian-American families and three converts. The founders recognized a need for an English-language parish in Northern Virginia and celebrated their first Divine Liturgy in February 1987. St. Joseph of Optina in Hampton Roads was founded in 1989 and has been under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia since 2007. A Fluvanna Review article republished by OrthoChristian in December 2016 described the Skete of St. Maximos near Palmyra as an Eastern Orthodox monastery where two monks lived, one of whom taught students to write icons.