A church that was apocryphally pledged by a Greek man caught in a storm in the high sea of Bay of Bengal is recording a milestone on Sunday.

Alexias Argyree did keep his word after a safe landing and ₹30,000 was donated from his estate to build a church on Amratolla Street, off Canning Street. But the building that is completing a century is the current structure that houses southeast Asia’s only Greek Orthodox Church, next to the Kalighat tram depot.

With four Doric columns giving it a very Greek façade, the current church, built in 1924, harks back to the earlier structure through a marble tablet on the outer wall, dated 1778, naming the original eight Greek donors, led by Warren Hastings, the first British governor-general, who gave the land.

The Church on Amratolla Street and the cemetery next door served Calcutta’s Greek population, which primarily comprised merchants dealing in jute, shellac and spices. Among them were the Ralli Brothers, who started India operations in 1851.

Once the earlier church fell into disuse, the community built the new structure in Kalighat, now owned by the Greek embassy and declared a heritage structure. The cemetery, too, was shifted to Phoolbagan.

The church, under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, was resurrected in the early 90s after being under lock and key since 1972 in the Naxal period. “Hawkers had taken over the pavement in the ’80s. The church was almost hidden from view,” recalled Cristodulous Biswas, who helps his uncle, Father Andrew Mondal, and the celebrant priest Father Raphael Maity in managing the day-to-day affairs.

Currently, the only Greek national in the city is Sister Nektaria Paradisi, who came in 1991 with Father Ignatius Sennis .

“Everything was caked in dust and infested with termites — the books, vestments, furniture… The roof was leaking. It took Father Ignatius and me six months to clean and repair the church. It was like building a new place,” she told The Telegraph.

For the centenary celebration on Sunday, there would be a morning Eucharist. “The Sunday service is mostly in Bengali and English with a few Greek phrases sometimes used in the prayers. No one attending the service except me understands Greek anymore,” said the Sister, who also runs a home for underprivileged children on the city’s fringes, on behalf of the Philanthropic Society of the Orthodox Church, a charitable NGO having its office on the church premises.

The ambassador of Greece Aliki Koutsomitopoulou has come from Delhi as has the Bishop of Singapore and South Asia, Father Tsilis Konstantinos, who is the exarch
of India.

“The Greek Orthodox Church has a unique place not just in Indo-Greek relations but in the history of Calcutta. We had come here to be friends with Indians. It continues to be a cultural bridge between our people,” the bishop, who often visits Calcutta from his Singapore base, told The Telegraph.