The “Voice of Orthodoxy” was a weekly Greek language radio program that was produced and hosted by Bishop Petros (Astyfides) of Astoria. He was occasionally assisted by Gerontissa Siglitiki who hosted portions of the programs. He would record and edit the programs on a “reel to reel” tape recorder in his office at the Cathedral of St Markella in Astoria. He would then have his deacon, Fr Nikodemos Kalantis, deliver them to the broadcast studios of WEVD in Manhattan. WEVD was a radio station that had programing in the Japanese, Yiddish, Russian, Italian, Spanish, English, and Greek languages. The station had as its tag line, “WEVD – The station that speaks your language.” Bishop Petros’ program was produced between the years 1967 and 1973. Thousands of Greek speakers in the Greater New York Metropolitan area would tune in to hear the program every Thursday evening at 7:30 PM. It is believed that the Voice of Orthodoxy was the first regularly scheduled program focusing strictly on the Greek Orthodox Faith in America. Recently, GOCTV has discovered some dozens of original ¼ inch magnetic “reel to reel” tapes of the “Voice of Orthodoxy”. We are currently in the process of digitizing them, translating them, adding English subtitles, and uploading them to the internet so that a new generation of the Faithful can be edified by them. This first program we have uploaded has as its subject, St Philaret the Merciful, some “Church News”, and a discussion of why membership in Freemasonry is forbidden to members of the Church. It was broadcast on Thursday – December 8/21, 1967.
