Who Was St Raphael of Brooklyn? The First Orthodox Bishop Consecrated in America

On 13 March 1904, in a converted church on Pacific Street in Brooklyn, two Russian bishops laid their hands on a Syrian archimandrite, while a photographer's flash cartridge filled the church with smoke. The man was Raphael Hawaweeny, and the service was the first consecration of an Orthodox bishop held in America.

The Orthodox Church now venerates him as St Raphael of Brooklyn, the shepherd who spent twenty years gathering Arabic-speaking Orthodox immigrants scattered across North America into parishes. Because he lived in the age of newspapers, his story is unusually well documented, including a suspension by his own patriarch, a street gunfight that ended with his arrest, and a 1910 letter on the Episcopal Church that he later withdrew. This article tells the life as the Church remembers it, then asks what the documents actually show.

In brief

Raphael Hawaweeny was born in Beirut in November 1860 to an Orthodox family from Damascus who had fled the violence of that year. He studied at the patriarchal school in Damascus, at the theological school of Halki near Constantinople, and at the Kiev Theological Academy, where he was ordained priest in 1889. After heading the Antiochian church in Moscow and teaching Arabic at the Kazan academy, he came to New York in November 1895 as pastor of the Syrian Orthodox community, under the Russian bishop who then oversaw all Orthodox in America. He traveled the continent founding parishes, published service books and a magazine in Arabic, and encouraged English for the young. On 13 March 1904 he was consecrated Bishop of Brooklyn by St Tikhon and Bishop Innocent (Pustynsky), the first Orthodox episcopal consecration in North America. In June 1910 he allowed Episcopal clergy to minister to his people in limited cases, then withdrew that permission and left an Anglican-Orthodox society. He died on 27 February 1915. The Orthodox Church in America glorified him in 2000 after a joint study with the Antiochian Archdiocese, and the Patriarchate of Antioch added him to its calendar in 2023.

Thesis: The documentary record bears out the Church's memory of St Raphael as a tireless missionary bishop. It also shows a man who made one serious pastoral error, the 1910 permission for Episcopal ministrations, and then rightly corrected it, holding to the Orthodox truth that the Church's sacraments are not shared outside her one faith.

The life as the Church tells it

The Life published by the Orthodox Church in America says Raphael's parents, Michael Hawaweeny and his second wife Mariam, were Damascenes who fled to Beirut during the persecution in which their parish priest, St Joseph of Damascus, was martyred. Raphael was born there; the exact date is unknown, but he placed it near the feast of the Archangels on 8 November. He was baptized at Theophany 1861 and the family returned to Damascus that spring.¹

Patriarch Hierotheus of Antioch took him as a student for the priesthood, and he was tonsured a monk on 28 March 1879. Because the Balamand seminary was closed, he was sent on scholarship to Halki, where he was ordained deacon on 8 December 1885, and then to the Kiev Theological Academy. In 1889 he was ordained priest there by Bishop Sylvester, the academy's rector, and placed in charge of the Antiochian representation church in Moscow.²

When the Greek Cypriot Spyridon was elected patriarch of Antioch in 1891, Raphael, who wanted the Church of Antioch governed by its own Arab clergy, refused to commemorate him in the services. He was suspended, kept writing against the patriarchate in the Russian press, and was eventually reconciled and released to the Russian Church, which sent him to teach Arabic at the Kazan Theological Academy.³

In 1895 the Syrian Orthodox Benevolent Society of New York invited him to be its pastor. He arrived in November, set up a chapel of St Nicholas in lower Manhattan, and in 1896 began the first of several journeys across the continent, visiting thirty cities and serving Liturgy in homes where there was no church.⁴ In 1898 he produced an Arabic service book and began bringing priests from Syria. In 1902 he bought a church on Pacific Street in Brooklyn, which Bishop Tikhon consecrated as St Nicholas Cathedral.⁵

The Patriarchate of Antioch, especially after Meletios became its first Arab patriarch in generations, repeatedly offered him sees at home, and Raphael kept declining. Paul Garrett lists Beirut, Zahleh, Aleppo, Akkar, Tripoli and Tyre-and-Sidon among the offers.⁶ Instead, at Bishop Tikhon's request, the Russian Holy Synod elected him in 1903 as Tikhon's second vicar bishop, with the title Bishop of Brooklyn and charge of the Syro-Arab mission. {{very-strong: He was consecrated on 13 March 1904 in St Nicholas Church, Brooklyn, by Bishop Tikhon and Bishop Innocent (Pustynsky).}}⁷

As bishop he founded the Arabic magazine Al-Kalimat (The Word) in 1905, blessed the grounds of St Tikhon's Monastery in Pennsylvania, and recommended Isabel Hapgood's English service book for his parishes.⁸ He fell ill with heart disease late in 1912, kept traveling through 1914, and died in the early hours of 27 February 1915. By then, the Life says, the mission had thirty parishes and 25,000 faithful.⁹

The primary historical evidence

• His own writings. The June 1910 letter on Episcopal ministrations survives because the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire printed it in its convention journal that November.¹⁰ His pastoral letter withdrawing that permission was reprinted in Peter Kohanik's 1932-34 compilation for Orthodox young people.¹¹ Historians also quote his magazine Al-Kalimat.¹²
• Newspapers. New York papers reported his consecration, the 1905 conflict and his funeral; Matthew Namee of the Orthodox History website has reprinted many of these reports.¹³
• A witness who knew him. Isabel Hapgood, the Episcopalian translator of the Orthodox service book, wrote about him in 1899 and described his funeral in the New York Tribune on 8 March 1915; she had known him, Namee notes, since he first arrived in America.¹⁴
• Church and court records. Letters of Patriarch Meletios and St Tikhon and a 1923 Michigan court case (Hanna v. Malick) bear on whom he answered to.¹⁵

What can we actually verify?

(a) Contemporary or near-contemporary documentary evidence

The outline of his career is secure. Hapgood's 1899 article describes "the Rev. Archimandrite Raphael" as rector of the Syrian church at 77 Washington Street, says he "was offered the Bishopric of Beirut several years ago, but he prefers his larger sphere in this country," and notes that he visited all parts of it "about once in two years."¹⁶ The New York Sun of 14 March 1904 reported that "the candidate was led by Bishop Tikhon and Bishop Innocent to the holy gate," and that the vestments and crown "were the personal gift of the Czar."¹⁷ Hapgood's 1915 account confirms the two consecrating bishops and adds: "That is, I am sure, the only ocasion [sic] when a Bishop of the Orthodox Eastern Church has been consecrated in America." She also wrote that the "Young Turk element" quarrelled with him for "reciting the formal prayer for the Sultan," that "several attempts were made on his life," and that he died "worn and gray as a man of seventy."¹⁸

Hapgood misdates the consecration to May and places his birth in Damascus.¹⁹

The documents also preserve his hardest year. In 1905 a newspaper feud between New York's Orthodox Syrians and Maronite Catholics turned violent. On the night of 18 September a gunfight broke out on Pacific Street outside the house of Naoum Mokarzel, editor of the Maronite paper Al Hoda. Raphael, walking with armed parishioners because he believed his life was threatened, fled and was arrested. A police officer swore that the bishop had pointed a revolver at him; Raphael told the World, "I did not have a revolver at any time during the excitement," and no gun was found.²⁰ The police inspector said he was "satisfied that the Bishop is innocent of all the charges," and Namee, who openly admits his admiration for the saint, reports that Raphael was later acquitted in open court.²¹

(b) Later hagiographical tradition

The modern Lives add scriptural framing and interpretation, not new events. Their main tendency is to smooth. The OCA Life, for example, says that "at first he did not understand the teachings of the heterodox" and later took steps to protect his flock, without mentioning that this referred to a formal letter of permission he had issued and then withdrawn.²² Small dates also vary: the OCA has him arrive in New York on 2 November 1895, Garrett on 14 November, probably a Julian-Gregorian difference.²³

(c) Reported miracles

Raphael's veneration does not rest on reported miracles; the glorification documents emphasize his labors and his faith. The OCA troparion ends, "Glory to Him Who, through you, grants healing to all!", but this article found no documented collection of healings comparable to those gathered for some saints.²⁴ An OCA educational sheet describes his relics as "incorrupt" when they were moved in 1989; no published examination confirming this has been found, and the 2024 exhumation was described as clergy "carefully bringing out each part of the relics," so it is best taken as a pious report.²⁵

The 1910 letter and the Episcopalians

Around 1900 Orthodox-Anglican relations in America were warm. In 1908 an American branch of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union was founded, and Raphael was elected its Orthodox vice president.²⁶ With his flock scattered far from Orthodox priests, in June 1910 he wrote to the Union setting out conditions under which a Syrian Orthodox could receive a sacrament from an Episcopal bishop or priest. He insisted on Orthodox marriage rules, a license from himself before any marriage, baptism by "a Trine Immersion" followed by chrismation from an Orthodox priest as soon as possible, and, for a dying layman who confessed and professed the Orthodox faith "as expressed in the Orthodox version of the Nicene Creed," permission to receive Communion from an Episcopal clergyman.²⁷ He added that "in this matter I am only speaking for myself personally, as an Orthodox Bishop."

{{strong: Within about fifteen months he withdrew the permission and resigned from the Union, and a pastoral letter forbade his people to seek Episcopal sacraments.}}²⁸ That letter explains why. Some Episcopal clergy had told Orthodox people that he "recognized the Anglican Communion ... as being united with the Holy Orthodox Church," had offered their ministrations even where Orthodox priests lived in the same towns, and had said Orthodox people need not seek their own priests. After studying Anglican doctrine, he wrote, "I am convinced that the doctrinal teaching and practices as well as the discipline of the whole Anglican Church are unacceptable to the Holy Orthodox Church."²⁹ Instead he allowed emergency lay baptism by triple immersion and told each household to read the Hours at home.

His reversal was right. Anglican orders and sacraments are not the Mysteries of the Orthodox Church, and Orthodox Christians receive Communion only within her communion, because the chalice is the sign of one faith and one Church. However hedged and well meant, the 1910 permission blurred that line, and the confusion among his flock showed the cost. Saying so is no insult to Anglicans, many of whom St Raphael knew and held in personal regard; it is the plain teaching of the Church he served as bishop.

The dates are uncertain. Namee dates the resignation to 25 September 1911, while the pastoral letter is labelled in Kohanik's book as "issued late in the year 1912."³⁰ Authorship is also unclear. Namee argues from style that both the resignation and the pastoral letter were drafted by Fr Ingram Nathaniel Irvine, a former Episcopal priest on Raphael's staff, while stressing that Raphael agreed with them and signed them.³¹ {{debated: That Irvine drafted the letters is a reasonable inference from style, not a documented fact.}}

Glorification and feast days

A joint commission of the Orthodox Church in America and the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese studied his life for three years. {{strong: The OCA Holy Synod decided to glorify him at its spring session of 27-30 March 2000, and the rite was served at St Tikhon's Monastery on 28-29 May 2000.}} The proclamation was signed as a witness by Bishop Antoun on behalf of Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochian Archdiocese.³² On 19 October 2023 the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Antioch, at the request of Metropolitan Saba, added him to its own calendar.³³

The OCA keeps his feast on 27 February, the day of his repose, and commemorates him with All Saints of North America on the second Sunday after Pentecost. The Antiochian Archdiocese also keeps the first Saturday of November, near his name day.³⁴ He was buried beneath the altar of his Brooklyn cathedral; his relics were moved to the Antiochian Village in Pennsylvania in 1988 or 1989, part of them was given to St Nicholas Cathedral in Brooklyn in November 2000, and the remains at the Village were exhumed for veneration in July 2024.³⁵ The OCA's troparion begins: "Your proclamation has gone forth throughout North America, / calling the scattered sheep into the unity of the church."³⁶

The Orthodox position

The Church does not make saints; it recognizes those whom God has glorified, and asks their prayers as members of one Body who are alive in Christ. (The site's guide How Does Someone Become a Saint in the Orthodox Church? explains the process, and our saints page gathers other lives.) Glorification judges a person's holiness, not every decision he made. Namee, writing as an admirer, puts it plainly: "As the June 1910 letter proves, he was not perfect."³⁷

The Church honors the shape of his whole life: a monk who declined office at home to serve immigrants, traveled and translated so that people he would never meet could pray, and publicly changed course when a well-meant concession confused his flock. His later letter states the Orthodox principle that sacramental communion expresses one faith, the same principle behind the Church's practice explained in Why Can't Non-Orthodox Christians Receive Communion in an Orthodox Church?

During his life all Orthodox in America were under one Russian archbishop, while Raphael kept close ties with Antioch and wrote in Al-Kalimat that Patriarch Meletios counted his diocese as one of Antioch's, "notwithstanding its nominal allegiance to the Russian Holy Synod."³⁸ After his death his flock split into rival camps loyal to Russia and to Antioch, and the Patriarchate of Antioch set up its own archdiocese in 1924.³⁹ At the presentation of his relics in 2000, Metropolitan Theodosius of the OCA said: "Much of the last century witnessed the weakening of our Church in America specifically because of the ethnic divisions which fostered the multiplication of national jurisdictions."⁴⁰ The background is explained in Why Are There So Many Orthodox Jurisdictions?

The strongest objections

"His 1910 letter shows he was an ecumenist, and the Church has quietly rewritten him"

Some see the 1910 letter as his real view and the reversal as a capitulation to Irvine; others are troubled that a saint ever allowed Communion from non-Orthodox clergy. The second concern is the sound one: the permission was a mistake. But it was not a settled conviction. The 1910 letter was hedged, personal and pastoral; it insisted on Orthodox rules and on chrismation by an Orthodox priest. The reversal followed what happened when it was used, as people took it to mean the churches were already united. That is a bishop correcting an error, not a capitulation. Garrett, an Orthodox historian, says Raphael and Archbishop Platon kept a "personal regard and love" for the Anglicans they knew, with a firm conviction that union "was not yet possible."⁴¹ The fair criticism is that some popular Lives omit the 1910 letter; the honest record makes him more credible.

"The 1912 letter is unfair to Anglicans"

An Anglo-Catholic of the period might object to the letter's sharpest lines, such as its claim that the Episcopal Church "does not differ in things vital to the well being of the Holy Orthodox Church from some of the most arrant Protestant sects." Hapgood, an Episcopalian who loved him, wrote in 1915 that his "later alienation from them is regarded as having arisen under misapprehension."⁴² The letter itself says it speaks "from the Holy Orthodox Eastern Catholic point of view," and its substantive points, such as the number of sacraments in the Prayer Book catechism and the Filioque in the Creed, accurately describe the Episcopal Church of 1912. Its verdict stands. For what Anglicans themselves hold, see the site's overview of the Anglican tradition.

"A bishop arrested after a gunfight is no saint"

The record shows he went out at night with armed parishioners, a gunfight broke out, he ran, and an officer swore he drew a pistol. It also shows no weapon was found, the newspapers contradicted one another, the police inspector believed him innocent, and he was acquitted. Namee weighs whether Raphael lied and judges it "possible" but not "likely."⁴³ On the evidence, the fair conclusion is that he was caught up in communal violence he had tried to calm, not that he caused it.

"His glorification was a jurisdictional project"

Because Antioch added him to its calendar only in 2023, some suspect church politics. But the Antiochian Archdiocese sat on the joint commission, took part in 2000 and has kept his feasts since; 2023 formalized existing veneration.⁴⁴ Shared saints across jurisdictions are normal in Orthodoxy, as with St Herman of Alaska, glorified on the same day in 1970 by both the OCA and the Russian Church Outside Russia.

What we can say confidently

• Raphael Hawaweeny was born in Beirut in 1860 to a Damascene Orthodox family, studied at Halki and Kiev, and was ordained priest in Kiev in 1889.
• He came to New York in November 1895 to serve Arabic-speaking Orthodox immigrants under the Russian bishop of America.
• He was consecrated Bishop of Brooklyn on 13 March 1904 by St Tikhon and Bishop Innocent, the first Orthodox episcopal consecration in North America.
• He issued a limited permission for Episcopal ministrations in June 1910, then withdrew it and left the Anglican-Orthodox Union.
• He died on 27 February 1915 and was glorified by the OCA in 2000 with the participation of the Antiochian Archdiocese.

What remains disputed

• Whether the pastoral letter withdrawing the 1910 permission was issued in 1911 or late in 1912, and how much of it Fr Ingram Irvine wrote.
• Exactly what happened on Pacific Street on 18 September 1905; the newspaper accounts conflict.
• Whether his diocese was in substance Russian or Antiochian; his own statements pointed both ways, as a Michigan judge complained in 1923.
• Small dates: his birthday, his arrival in New York (2 or 14 November 1895), the year his relics went to the Antiochian Village (1988 or 1989), and the July 2024 exhumation date (18 or 19 July).
• Whether his relics were found incorrupt; the claim appears in church material, but no published examination has been found.

Conclusion

St Raphael lived a missionary life by trains, letters and printing presses, refusing promotion at home to stay with immigrants who had left everything familiar. The documents also show him under pressure: suspended in his youth for defying a patriarch, arrested in a riot he did not start, and humble enough to retract, rightly, a policy that was harming the people it was meant to help. Those who ask his prayers ask a faithful bishop who corrected a mistake and kept "calling the scattered sheep into the unity of the church." For those far from a parish, his advice to read the Hours at home still helps, as the site's guide Can You Be Orthodox Without a Nearby Parish? explains. Holy Hierarch Raphael, pray to God for us.

Notes

1. Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn (+1915)," Lives of the Saints, 27 February, oca.org. ↩
2. Same source; ordination by Bishop Sylvester on 16 June 1889 also in Matthew Namee, "This week in American Orthodox history (June 11-17)," Orthodox History, 11 June 2012. ↩
3. OCA Life (note 1); Namee, "A Timeline of the Life of St Raphael," Orthodox History, 9 February 2015 ("1892 - Suspended by Patriarch of Antioch for disobedience"). ↩
4. OCA Life (note 1). ↩
5. OCA Life (note 1); St Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, Brooklyn, "History," stnicholascathedral.org (purchase of 301-303 Pacific Street in 1902). ↩
6. Paul D. Garrett, "Envoy from Antioch: The Life and Ministry of Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny," Again (December 1993): 6-9, reproduced at almoutran.com. ↩
7. OCA Life (note 1); Namee, "This week in American Orthodox history (March 12-18)," Orthodox History, 12 March 2012; Namee, "St. Raphael's consecration: a newly-discovered photo," Orthodox History, 16 February 2010. Garrett (note 6) places the election in the Russian St Nicholas Cathedral on 12 March and the consecration in the Syrian church the next day; his printed year "1906" is evidently a misprint. ↩
8. OCA Life (note 1). ↩
9. OCA Life (note 1); Namee, "Timeline" (note 3). ↩
10. Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn, letter of June 1910, from the Journal of the ... One Hundred and Ninth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Hampshire (November 1910), reprinted in Namee, "St. Raphael and the Episcopalians in 1910," Orthodox History, 11 March 2010. ↩
11. Raphael, pastoral letter "To My Beloved Clergy and Laity of the Syrian Greek-Orthodox Catholic Church in North America," from Peter G. Kohanik, comp., The Most Useful Knowledge for the Orthodox Russian-American Young People (1932-34), 297-303, reprinted as "St. Raphael of Brooklyn on the Episcopalians," Orthodox History, 27 February 2013. ↩
12. Namee, "Who was St. Raphael under: Antioch or Russia?" Orthodox History, 8 October 2014. ↩
13. See notes 7, 20 and 21. ↩
14. Isabel Hapgood, "Syro-Arabians in the United States," The Independent, 16 February 1899, and her account of the funeral in the New York Tribune, 8 March 1915, both reprinted at Orthodox History (15 June 2010 and 2 December 2010). ↩
15. Namee, "Who was St. Raphael under" (note 12), quoting Patriarch Meletios, St Tikhon's 1905 proposal, the 1912 Episcopal commission report and Hanna v. Malick (Michigan Supreme Court, 1923). ↩
16. Hapgood 1899 (note 14). ↩
17. New York Sun, 14 March 1904, as quoted in Namee, "St. Raphael's consecration" (note 7). ↩
18. Hapgood 1915 (note 14). ↩
19. Same source, with Namee's bracketed correction on the birthplace. ↩
20. Namee, "The Battle of Pacific Street," Parts 1, 3 and 4, Orthodox History, 28 July, 1 August and 4 August 2014, quoting the New York World, 19 September 1905. ↩
21. Namee, Part 4 (note 20), quoting the Sun, 22 September 1905; Namee, "The Trial of St. Raphael, Part 1," Orthodox History, 5 January 2010 ("his subsequent acquittal in open court"). ↩
22. OCA Life (note 1). ↩
23. OCA Life (note 1); Garrett (note 6). The calendar explanation is the author's inference. ↩
24. OCA, "Repose of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn: Troparion and Kontakion," oca.org. ↩
25. OCA Department of Christian Education, "Saint Raphael Hawaweeny: Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America," oca.org (PDF); for 2024, Fr Andrew Stephen Damick as quoted in OrthoChristian.com (note 35). ↩
26. Namee, "St. Raphael and the Episcopalians in 1910" (note 10); Garrett (note 6) dates his acceptance of the vice presidency to 13 October 1908. ↩
27. Letter of June 1910 (note 10). ↩
28. Garrett (note 6): "Within fifteen months, however, he withdrew the edict"; Namee, "The Reversal of St. Raphael," Orthodox History, 15 March 2010. ↩
29. Pastoral letter (note 11). ↩
30. Namee, "Reversal" (note 28); Kohanik as cited in note 11; Namee, "Timeline" (note 3), which lists the resignation in 1911 and the "edict rescinding prior authorization" in 1912. ↩
31. Namee, "Reversal" (note 28), and the introduction to the 2013 reprint (note 11). ↩
32. OCA, "Thousands Attend Glorification of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn, at Saint Tikhon's Monastery," OCA News archive, 2000. ↩
33. "Antiochian Church canonizes two saints, adds St. Raphael and All Saints of Antioch to calendar," OrthoChristian.com, 20 October 2023; St Nicholas Cathedral, "History" (note 5), giving the date 19 October 2023. ↩
34. OCA glorification report (note 32); St Nicholas Cathedral, "History" (note 5); Antiochian Village Camp, "St. Raphael Pilgrimage," avcamp.org. ↩
35. Garrett (note 6) on the burial beneath the altar; "Relics of St. Raphael (Hawaweeny) of Brooklyn exhumed for veneration," OrthoChristian.com, 19 July 2024 ("Since 1988"; exhumed 18 July); OCA educational sheet (note 25) ("In 1989"); OCA, "Metropolitan Theodosius presents relics of St Raphael to Antiochian Cathedral," OCA News archive, 3 November 2000; St Nicholas Cathedral, "History" (note 5), which gives 19 July 2024. ↩
36. OCA troparion (note 24). ↩
37. Namee, "Reversal" (note 28). ↩
38. Raphael in Al-Kalimat, as quoted in Namee, "Who was St. Raphael under" (note 12). ↩
39. Same source. ↩
40. Metropolitan Theodosius, sermon of 3 November 2000, in the OCA report (note 35). ↩
41. Garrett (note 6). ↩
42. Pastoral letter (note 11); Hapgood 1915 (note 14). ↩
43. Namee, "The Battle of Pacific Street, Part 4" (note 20). ↩
44. OCA glorification report (note 32); OrthoChristian 2023 (note 33). ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Raphael (Hawaweeny), Bishop of Brooklyn. Letter to the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches Union, June 1910. In Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Ninth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Hampshire (November 1910); reprinted in Namee, "St. Raphael and the Episcopalians in 1910," Orthodox History, 11 March 2010.
• Raphael (Hawaweeny), Bishop of Brooklyn. Pastoral letter to the clergy and laity of the Syrian Greek-Orthodox Catholic Church in North America. In Peter G. Kohanik, comp., The Most Useful Knowledge for the Orthodox Russian-American Young People (1932-34), 297-303; reprinted in Orthodox History, 27 February 2013.
• Hapgood, Isabel F. "Syro-Arabians in the United States." The Independent, 16 February 1899. Reprinted in Orthodox History, 15 June 2010.
• Hapgood, Isabel F. Account of the death and funeral of Bishop Raphael. New York Tribune, 8 March 1915. Reprinted in Orthodox History, 2 December 2010.
• New York newspaper reports of 1904-1905 (Sun, Times, Tribune, World, Brooklyn Daily Eagle), as reprinted by Matthew Namee (see below).

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Orthodox Church in America. "Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn (+1915)" and "Repose of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn: Troparion and Kontakion." Lives of the Saints, 27 February, oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America. "Thousands Attend Glorification of Saint Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn, at Saint Tikhon's Monastery" (2000) and "Metropolitan Theodosius presents relics of St Raphael to Antiochian Cathedral" (3 November 2000). OCA News archive, oca.org.
• Orthodox Church in America, Department of Christian Education. "Saint Raphael Hawaweeny: Confessor and Defender of Orthodoxy in America." PDF, oca.org.
• Garrett, Paul D. "Envoy from Antioch: The Life and Ministry of Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny." Again, December 1993, 6-9. Reproduced at almoutran.com.
• St Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral, Brooklyn. "History." stnicholascathedral.org.
• Antiochian Village Camp. "St. Raphael Pilgrimage." avcamp.org.
• "Antiochian Church canonizes two saints, adds St. Raphael and All Saints of Antioch to calendar." OrthoChristian.com, 20 October 2023.
• "Relics of St. Raphael (Hawaweeny) of Brooklyn exhumed for veneration." OrthoChristian.com, 19 July 2024.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Namee, Matthew. "A Timeline of the Life of St Raphael." Orthodox History, 9 February 2015.
• Namee, Matthew. "The Reversal of St. Raphael." Orthodox History, 15 March 2010.
• Namee, Matthew. "Who was St. Raphael under: Antioch or Russia?" Orthodox History, 8 October 2014.
• Namee, Matthew. "The Battle of Pacific Street," Parts 1, 3 and 4 (28 July, 1 August, 4 August 2014), and "The Trial of St. Raphael, Part 1" (5 January 2010). Orthodox History.
• Namee, Matthew. "St. Raphael's consecration: a newly-discovered photo" (16 February 2010) and "This week in American Orthodox history" for 12-18 March and 11-17 June 2012. Orthodox History.

Sources from the tradition discussed (Episcopal / Anglican)

• Hapgood, Isabel F., an Episcopalian, writing in 1899 and 1915 (listed above under primary sources).
• The Diocese of New Hampshire convention journal of 1910, which printed the June 1910 letter (listed above).