When Pope Leo XIV visited Turkey in November 2025, he visited the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Together, they called for Catholic and Orthodox to take “new and courageous steps on the path towards unity.” This led to the discovery of Catholic and Orthodox connections right here in Central Vermont, between St. Augustine Church in Montpelier and St. Jacob of Alaska Orthodox Church in Northfield Falls.

In St. Augustine Church, there is a beautiful icon of St. Augustine hanging over the tabernacle. The icon was commissioned in the early 2000s by then pastor Father Thomas Mosher. It was paid for by Sister Barbara Gregoire, her brother Ernest, and his wife Leona, which is memorialized on a plaque on the confessional wall above the table.

When I reached out to Father Mosher for more detail, he looked through his records and found a letter from the Russian iconographer, Vladislav Andrejev. Andrejev was based in New York City and founded the Prosopon School of Iconology in 1993. In 2005, Father Mosher went to a retreat at the Edmundite Retreat House in Mystic, Connecticut, where he met Andrejev, who was there teaching a class in iconography. This most likely dates the painting of the icon in St. Augustine Church to late 2005 or 2006.

What probably no one at St. Augustine knew at the time was that Andrejev’s son Dmitri, also a prominent iconographer, had already started a painting for another church eight miles south the year before. In 2004 Dmitri began painting scenes for St. Jacob of Alaska Orthodox Church in Northfield Falls. In 2005 Dmitri and his family moved to Vermont and settled in Brookfield the next year. He continued his work at St. Jacob, filling it with beautiful paintings.

What emerged was a remarkable and most likely independent convergence, that a father and son were composing artwork for St. Augustine Church and St. Jacob of Alaska Church at about the same time. Thus, the two churches, one Roman Catholic and the other Eastern Orthodox, are united in their art by a single family of artists.

This in turn has added meaning in light of Pope Leo’s and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s joint declaration on November 29, that “heeding the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, we continue to walk with firm determination on the path of dialogue, in love and truth (cf. Eph 4:15), towards the hoped-for restoration of full communion between our sister Churches.” Perhaps our joint artistic heritage can inspire in our communities to that which Leo and Bartholomew call Catholics and Orthodox to: “new and courageous steps on the path towards unity.”

Nine of us marked Pope Leo’s visit to Turkey and Patriarch Bartholomew with a pilgrimage the afternoon of November 29. We started at the icon at St. Augustine Church and walked the eight miles to St. Jacob of Alaska, where we attended Vespers. Our steps had to be courageous on the narrow shoulder of Route 12. We said the rosary and repeated the Jesus Prayer as we walked under the rising moon. We joined in the incense and song of our Orthodox siblings, who along with the cloud of icons welcomed us as members of a single body of Christ.