Faculty

Prof Richard Schneider provides overall coordination for the Orthodox School of Theology programmes at Trinity College as well as teaching courses. His chief teaching areas include church history in all periods and especially the Iconology — i.e., the liturgical theology — of the visual, including art and architecture, in Orthodoxy (and in the medieval West). In addition to being Adjunct Professor of Trinity he is also Professor at St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York.

Prof Schneider is the Emeritus President of the Canadian Council of Churches and he continues to be deeply concerned with ecumenism and Eastern-Western Christian relations and pan-Orthodox relations. He is keenly interested in the critical-thinking hermeneutic issues which challenge History-as-Theology.

Dr Ramez Boutros holds a PhD in Sciences de l'Antiquité from the University of Marc Bloch, Strasbourg, France, and teaches courses in Egyptian and Near Eastern Christianity and monasticism for the Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College. He has also lectured at Regis College, the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, and Huron College at the University of Western Ontario.

Dr Boutros's areas of special interest include Coptic architecture and archaeology, the history and archaeology of pilgrimage sites in the mediaeval period, pilgrimage sites and cult of the physician saints, cultural exchanges in the monastic and pilgrimage sites, and early women's monasticism in the Near and Middle East.

Fr Mebratu K. Gebru currently serves at St Mary’s Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahedo Church (EOTC), Toronto both as a priest and youth educator. Having completed basic theological studies at the Holy Trinity Theological College of the EOTC’s patriarchate in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia he earned his first degree from the college. Upon completion of his undergraduate studies, he served at the college as a graduate assistant instructor for about two years.

In 2003 Fr Gebru came to Canada to pursue theological studies at master’s level. His master’s thesis on the Christology of his own ecclesial tradition was revised and published by Gorgias Press, entitled: Miaphysite Christology: An Ethiopian Perspective. While working towards his PhD in theology, he was ordained a priest in 2008 at the same church where is currently serving. As he had developed a particular interest in the Ethiopian liturgy since he was pursuing his undergraduate studies, such interest was ultimately demonstrated in his doctoral thesis which he wrote on the theological and sacramental dimensions of the Ethiopian liturgical rite.

In 2013 Fr Gebru taught an online introductory course on the Ethiopian liturgy at St Mary Theological College and Ethio-American Cultural Institute. Fr Gebru lives in Toronto with his wife Helen and their two children, Yohanna and Samuel.

Dr Paul Ladouceur is an Orthodox theologian and writer living in Québec. He teaches theology and spirituality in the Orthodox theology programmes at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and Université Laval (in Montreal).

He has written or edited several books on Orthodoxy, including a general introduction to Orthodoxy under the title Living Orthodoxy (also in French, Rencontre avec l’Orthodoxie), and a book on Saint Maria of Paris (Mother Maria Skobtsova) (Sainte Marie de Paris, Une sainte des temps modernes). He has edited a book of writings of Father Lev Gillet (A Monk of the Eastern Church), published in France (2008), and a book of translations of writings of Saint Maria of Paris (Mother Maria Skobtsova), published in France (2011), and has published articles on Orthodox spirituality and theology in France, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

He is responsible for the French-language web site Pages Orthodoxes La Transfiguration and an electronic bulletin, Lumière du Thabor. He is a member of the Faith and Witness Commission of the Canadian Council of Churches.

Dr Ladouceur’s teaching interests include Christian spirituality, especially spirituality of the Eastern Church; Orthodox spirituality in the twentieth century; modern Orthodox theology; Orthodox dogmatic theology; Christianity in Russia; and the theology and history of ecumenism. His principal specialized research interests are Saint Maria of Paris and modern Orthodox spirituality and theology.

View Dr Ladouceur's profile on academia.edu >

Fr Fanourios Pappas was born in Chania, Crete, and studied at the University of Thessaloniki School of Theology. He earned his BA (2007) and MA (2009) in liturgics and his doctoral studies PhD (2013) examining the liturgical movement in 20th-century Greece.

In 2008, Fr Fanourios was ordained to the Diaconate by His Eminence Metropolitan Damaskinos of Kydonia and Apokoronon. He was the Metropolitan’s Archdeacon Assistant for three years before being ordained to the Priesthood in 2011. Since September 2013, Fr Fanourios has been the Parish Priest of Greek Orthodox Church of St Nicholas in Toronto.

Dr Maria-Fotini Polidoulis Kapsalis is the first female theologian in the Greek Orthodox Church of Canada. She joined Trinity in 2006 as an adjunct instructor. Her area of interest is early church history, dogmatics, early Christian Fathers and ethics, with a focus on Christian anthropology. Her thesis dissertation explored the meaning of authority in the writings of St. John Chrysostom.

Her most recent publication is “St. John Chrysostom’s Interpretation of Κεφαλή in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. 49, Nos. 3-4, (2004). She was one of the co-founders of the original Orthodox Christian Fellowship (OCF) at U of T in 1990 and has been involved with youth ministry in Toronto for many years, especially at her home parish of St Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church. She has lectured at various venues in Ontario including Inter-Faith Symposiums, and Clergy/Laity Conferences for the Greek Orthodox Metropolis.

She is also currently a teacher with the Toronto District School Board. She resides in Toronto with her husband and two children.

Fr Alexei Vassiouchkine's main teachings areas are formal theological thought, church history, and liturgical theology, but he also has a keen interest in literary presentation of religious ideas and values in both French and Russian writers. His publications include studies on M. Proust, Ch. Pégui, M. Barrès and Y. Yerofeev. When he graduated in 1995 from the University of St. Petersburg (Russia), his main area of academic interest was the interrelationship between religion and culture, especially as expressed in literature. In recent years, he has been more concerned with Orthodox theological studies including Patristics, Church History and Liturgics.

Fr Alexei is priest-in-charge of St Seraphim Orthodox Church in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto. He is married and has two young children.

Fr Basil was born in Foča, lived in Goražde Bosnia and Herzegovina, and immigrated to Canada in 1995. After concluding his elementary school in Kitchener, ON, he returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina where he studied theology in the seminary of “St. Peter of Dabrobosnia” and the College of “St. Basil of Ostrog” in the University of Eastern Sarajevo. During his studies he was tonsured a monastic, and ordained to the diaconate by his grace bishop Georgije of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Canada. After concluding his studies, in 2009, he returned to Canada and was ordained to the holy Priesthood.

Fr Basil furthered his studies in theology at the Orthodox Institute in Montreal, QC and Trinity College, Toronto, ON. He received his MTS, focusing on iconology and culture. He is now a PhD student in the Theology department at Trinity College (TST). His main focus is anthropology and patristics.

Fr Basil resides in the monastery of the Holy Transfiguration near Milton, ON.