Clergy | Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church

Parish Clergy

Church: (207) 783-6795 Church Email: holytrinitymaine@gmail.com

Fr. Anastasios Bendo was born in Korca, Albania in 1975 and raised in that region until moving to the capital city, Tirana, at the age of 14 to continue his studies. During that time Albania was a communist country and from 1967 until the early 1990’s it was also an atheistic state where every form of religious expression was suppressed and punished. Carrying inside him the pious examples of his grandmothers who had made an indelible impression on him as a child, he passed through his studies with hope that there would be a change towards greater freedom in his country. Indeed he was present in the capital city when great changes occurred and Albania became a democratic country once again. Soon after, Archbishop Anastasios Yiannoulatos was assigned by the ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to come to Albania and resurrect the church which had been so deeply hurt over the previous 25 years. Fr. Anastasios became very attached to the church and was soon baptized, a right that had been denied him and so many others. He began attending services, became the head of the Orthodox Youth Organization, representing the youth in Albania and abroad. He aided the Greek and American missionaries in their ministries: teaching catechism, traveling to villages with youth groups, helping in the soup kitchen, and translating etc
In the early 90’s he attended the Foreign Languages High School in Tirana, majoring in Italian with minors in French and English. He continued these studies at the University of Tirana from which he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 1998. Following this he also got a law degree at the University of Tirana, graduating in 2007. Meanwhile he also took the Theological Courses of Spiritual Formation, for the Students of the University of Tirana for the Catechism Work of the Church; a course lasting 4 years with lessons from the professors of the Seminary. In 2005 he became the translator for Archbishop Anastasios, translating his sermons in church and many documents and books in the office. He also worked in the publishing wing of the Church where he translated and edited and continued to do so until moving to the United States in 2022. He was ordained a deacon in 2009, arch-deacon in 2012, and priest in 2013 and served in the churches of Tirana.
In 2008 he married Prevytera Georgia (Gilman) Bendo who had moved to Albania in 2004 as an OCMC missionary, working in the Church’s Protagonists School. They have 4 children, Vasili, Evdoxia, Maria, and Xenia. In 2022, they moved to the United States where they were warmly welcomed in a new church family in Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Lewiston, Maine.