List of the Churches and the Apostles who founded them

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On another thread, I remember seeing a list of all the Churches of the East and the West with the names of the Apostles who went to each region and founded the faith. The information to me is useful in all of us seeing each other more as brothers in the faith than debating over theological differences.

If anyone can provide me with such a list, I would be apprecative.

We are closer to being in full communion with our eastern orthrodox brothers than we are with our protestant brethen.

I pray that we come into full communion with each other in my lifetime. Once the east and west are united, i feel that the protestant denominations would see the unity and want to be a part of God’s Church on earth.

God bless
 
Off the top of my head:

Rome: Sts Peter and Paul
Constantinople: St. Andrew
Antioch: St. Peter
Alexandria: St. Mark
Jerusalem: St. James
Moscow: St. Andrew (claimed through Constantinople)
Georgia: St. Andrew

I would assume Ethiopia claims St. Mark through Alexandria, however that is just a guess.
 
East Antioch, the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in central Mesopotamia (Iraq today), was founded by Saint Thomas the Apostle, by tradition. This corresponds to the Chaldean Catholic Church, Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East (and some others are claimed).

The Armenian Catholic Church, and Armenian Apostolic Church, traces to Apostles Bartholemew and Thaddeus.
 
West Syriac Tradition holds St. Peter as its founder,

Except in India where the West Syriac Tradition are made up of those from St. Thomas the Apostle’s original Community.
 
St. Jude and St. Bartholomew are identified as first bringing Christianity to the Armenians.
St. Thomas is identified as founder of Christianity in India and amongst the Parthians.
St. James the Greater is identified as bringing Christianity to Spain.
 
For the Ukrainian Church (Kyiv - capital city of Ukraine) it was always held to be St. Andrew on the hills of Kyiv by the Dnipro River. 🙂
 
thank you all so much, I have copied and pasted the one that have been posted. I understand that there are about 29 churches founded by the apostles. I hope to compile a list of them all .

God Bless
 
Cursilista said:
thank you all so much, I have copied and pasted the one that have been posted. I understand that there are about 29 churches founded by the apostles. I hope to compile a list of them all .

God Bless
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You will probably not get them all.

There is just too much we don’t know about many of the Apostles, and many Sees in Asia (and North Africa) today are no longer in existence, yet we should, if possible, identify which of these had Apostolic origins. Much of our information is apocryphal, and therefore not the most reliable.
 
Nine_Two said:
Off the top of my head:

Rome: Sts Peter and Paul
Constantinople: St. Andrew
Antioch: St. Peter
Alexandria: St. Mark
Jerusalem: St. James
Moscow: St. Andrew (claimed through Constantinople)
Georgia: St. Andrew

I would assume Ethiopia claims St. Mark through Alexandria, however that is just a guess.
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I think a strong argument can be made that the Jerusalem church is not Apostolic, in one sense, but founded by Jesus Christ himself. Apostolic churches are definitely ‘second tier’ in comparison.
 
You will probably not get them all.
Click to expand...
There is just too much we don’t know about many of the Apostles, and many Sees in Asia (and North Africa) today are no longer in existence, yet we should, if possible, identify which of these had Apostolic origins. Much of our information is apocryphal, and therefore not the most reliable.
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The proof is in the pudding as they say. Although we may have some differences, we are more alike than we are different. We are stronger together than apart. If we all have apostolic origins we are one church founded by Jesus through his apostles for all the world to see.

Whether the apostles went to the region themselves or sent their appointed representatives doesnt matter as much as that the churches of that region were started with the proper authorization of apostolic succession.

As an American Catholic, my knowledge of the Eastern Churhces is minimal. I am learning more every day and my first thoughts are why arent we one body in everything. I have read about the schism from both sides prospective and see where it is not impossible to reconcile. The problem I see is that by compromise both sides admit fallibility on certain doctrines. Therein lies the problem. How do we reconcile without one side admitting error. If all christians are to be united, i feel the importance of first uniting the east and the west then we can work on the protestants
 
Nine_Two said:
Off the top of my head:
Constantinople: St. Andrew
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Though this question deserves a thread of its own, it’s worth noting that even the irenic historian Fr. Francis Dvornik of pious memory, who has changed the way most scholars think of the extremely controversial Patriarch St. Photius the Great of Constantinople, states that St. Andrew did not establish the See of Constantinople, for there is no trace whatsoever of this legend in Eastern or Western tradition before the late 600s/early 700s, and the late-800s official Typicon of the Church of Hagia Sophia does not have a feast of St. Stachys the Apostle and does not mention the Apostolic foundations of the See of Constantinople in its entry for the glorious martyr St. Andrew the Apostle.

God bless you and yours!
 
There are several Apocryphal Gospels in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. They relate some stories about the work of the Apostles.

For example, I just finished some of the Clementine Homilies, and they relate St. Peter founding churches in Sidon and Tyre.

Not sure about how accepted these apocryphal stories are in the Church.
 
StRaphael said:
Though this question deserves a thread of its own, it’s worth noting that even the irenic historian Fr. Francis Dvornik of pious memory, who has changed the way most scholars think of the extremely controversial Patriarch St. Photius the Great of Constantinople, states that St. Andrew did not establish the See of Constantinople, for there is no trace whatsoever of this legend in Eastern or Western tradition before the late 600s/early 700s, and the late-800s official Typicon of the Church of Hagia Sophia does not have a feast of St. Stachys the Apostle and does not mention the Apostolic foundations of the See of Constantinople in its entry for the glorious martyr St. Andrew the Apostle.

God bless you and yours!
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Who then did they believe to be their founder?
 
Mar Thoma Catholics (in India) have St. Thomas as their founder. His relics are kept at a shrine in India.
 
There is no written or tradition that can be traced regarding this information until before the 6th or 8th century. It was criticized as a fabrication by many.

A possible scenario was St. Andrew ordained St. Stachys as a bishop then he (stachys) went to byzantium and founded the church as the Lord has commanded to preach the gospel to all nations. Also the ordination of St. Stachys as a bishop by St. Andrew, still has no basis on tradition, it is also possible that he was ordained by another bishop.
Vico said:
The website for the Ecumenical Patriarchate states:

“The Apostle Stachys was one of the Seventy Apostles of the Lord. In 38 AD Apostle Andrew appointed him first bishop of the city of Byzantium…”

patriarchate.org/patriarchate/former-patriarchs/stachys
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The strong argument here is that the church of Jerusalem (present) is not the same Ancient Church of Jerusalem before, In 68AD, the whole church of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Christians fled elsewhere, There was a time that the Ancient Jerusalem church didn’t exist anymore, Jerusalem’s name was even replaced by Ælia, When the Christians was able to return to AElia, the church was re-established and was even subject to the Bishop of Cæsarea, It was only in the First Ecumenical council that it was given honour, and later became patriarchate. The only ancient Churches recognized during the 3rd Century are, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, the others are ‘second tier’ in comparison.

Therefore we can say that the Church of Jerusalem was re-founded
Hesychios said:
I think a strong argument can be made that the Jerusalem church is not Apostolic, in one sense, but founded by Jesus Christ himself. Apostolic churches are definitely ‘second tier’ in comparison.
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marlo said:
The strong argument here is that the church of Jerusalem (present) is not the same Ancient Church of Jerusalem before, In 68AD, the whole church of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Christians fled elsewhere, There was a time that the Ancient Jerusalem church didn’t exist anymore, Jerusalem’s name was even replaced by Ælia, When the Christians was able to return to AElia, the church was re-established and was even subject to the Bishop of Cæsarea, It was only in the First Ecumenical council that it was given honour, and later became patriarchate. The only ancient Churches recognized during the 3rd Century are, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch, the others are ‘second tier’ in comparison.

Therefore we can say that the Church of Jerusalem was re-founded
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I will not argue these points. Historically you are substantially correct, I had thought about this very situation when I posted the above, and I was at first not going to post on it for that reason.

I would qualify that by saying Caesarea was a Metropolitan See, and Jerusalem had it’s own bishops under Caesarea. The evelation to a Patriarchate was not a founding.

However it is clear that the Christian community did survive there, somehow. They had a collective memory of the site of the Holy Sepulchre and the True Cross (at Golgotha). This information was given to Saint Helena, Constantine’s mother, when she went to Jerusalem. That means that the organic Christian community of Jerusalem did not in fact disappear, regardless of it’s meager situation.
 
Hesychios said:
However it is clear that the Christian community did survive there, somehow. They had a collective memory of the site of the Holy Sepulchre and the True Cross (at Golgotha). This information was given to Saint Helena, Constantine’s mother, when she went to Jerusalem. That means that the organic Christian community of Jerusalem did not in fact disappear, regardless of it’s meager situation.
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I won’t dispute that the Christian community in Jerusalem may have survived, but I should make note of one thing about St Helena: in the Syriac Tradition, the she was led to the location of the True Cross by Jews.
 
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