2003 - 2011

The Church of St. Thomas was born out of prayer. In 2003 a small group of people began meeting regularly in the home of Tony and Suzanne Lane to pray and worship God. Numbers increased as the local ex-pat community grew.

Early in 2007, Tony Lane, realising the need for a more suitable worship space, and inspired by the typical Cretan mountain chapels, designed and built the Church of St Thomas. In July that year, the ministry of the Church of St Thomas officially commenced with the naming and blessing of this newly built Church by Canon Mike Peters.

Canon Mike Peters was licensed by the Bishop of Europe and our first priest to live in the community. Over the next two years Canon Mike guided us through the process of becoming part of the Anglican Church in Europe, which included setting up a Church Council, introducing weekly Holy Communion services, along with major Church festivals, and most important of all training and preparing Tony Lane for the priesthood. Beginning as, and remaining part of the Greater Athens Chaplaincy, the congregation is largely autonomous, while engaged with other Anglicans in Greece, Europe, England, and in the Anglican Communion.

At the same service that the chapel was dedicated by Bishop Geoffrey Rowell, Tony Lane was Licensed as a Reader within the Anglican Church. Later that year the covered Tabernacle was erected by Tony, creating an area for over 100 worshippers to be seated in all weathers.

In October 2009 Tony Lane was made a deacon, and in July 2010 he was ordained as a priest. Tony now assists as a retired priest when he is in Crete.

2011-2018

The Rev. Terry Wilcock took over as our priest in charge in 2011, and served us for the following three years until January 2014, before returning to England. Before his posting in Crete, Mr. Wilcock worked in the diocese of Carlisle, as priest-in-charge of St. Thomas, Crosscrake, Kendal.

The Rev. Canon Philip Lambert was appointed to succeed Terry in July 2014. He and his wife,Frances Lambert,intended to stay in Crete for a long time, and they were both quite involved in helping to grow the “Social Supermarket” in Apokoronas. Unfortunately, Frances became quite ill and the decision was made to return to England for treatment in May 2017, where, sadly, she died that Autumn. Following this the Rev. Tony Lane and the Rev. Canon Ian Brothwood (an Anglican priest recently retired to Crete) undertook to provide coverage during the long interim.

2018-present: Our New Chaplain and Our New Curate

An international search for a new assistant chaplain was launched in 2017. A search committee was established, consisting of two parishioners and the Rev Canon Leonard Doolan, senior chaplain at the Anglican Church of St Paul in Athens. On their recommendation the fourth Bishop in Europe, the Right Rev Dr Robert Innes, appointed the Rev Canon D. Bruce Bryant Scott to be the new assistant chaplain.

Canon Bruce comes from the Anglican Church of Canada where he served in urban and rural parishes in the dioceses of Niagara (in Ontario) and British Columbia, on Vancouver Island. Bruce was Executive Officer and Diocesan Archdeacon in the Diocese of British Columbia from 2004 to 2012, working closely with Bishop James Cowan. He was a member of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada for fifteen years and served on innumerable diocesan, provincial, and national committees. As a very part-time Refugee Coordinator for the Diocese of BC in 2015-2017, he oversaw a ten-fold growth in the work of privately sponsoring refugees from Syria and other conflicted parts of the world. He is an Honorary Canon of the Diocese of British Columbia. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Harvard University, he is currently a candidate for a PhD from the University of London, with a thesis entitled “Unsettling Theology: The Theological Legacy of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada 1880-1970”. He awaits his oral examination in October 2019. He and his wife Frances moved to Crete with their retired racing greyhound Aodhán, and they have two adult children in the United States. Bruce is a follower of the Toronto Raptors, the Las Vegas Golden Knights, the Boston Red Sox, and the New England Patriots.

The Rev Julia Bradshaw was ordained a deacon on June 30, 2019. A member of the congregation practically from the beginning in 2004, she is one of the few “permanent” deacons in The Diocese in Europe. As a deacon her ministry is oriented towards service and those outside of the congregation as such. She will serve a three year curacy at St. Thomas’s under the supervision of Canon Bruce.