Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Father Nicola Yanney

Apostle to the Plains: The Life of Father Nicola Yanney

In 1892, a young man left his home in the coastal foothills of Lebanon in search of a better life. Coming to America with his newlywed wife, he found work as a traveling peddler before settling on a small farm in central Nebraska. Years later, personal tragedy and an unexpected midnight visit from a saint changed the course of his life. Seeing the desperate need of his fellow Orthodox Christians and heeding God s call, he would spend the rest of his life traversing the Great Plains as a circuit-riding priest, known to his thousands of parishioners as Father Nicola Yanney. His legacy stands alongside that of St. Raphael Hawaweeny, his mentor, as a seminal force in the American Orthodox Church of our day. His Grace Bishop Basil, is bishop of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.