It is with great sadness we learned of the death of Father Theodore de Quincey on 22 May, aged 77 years.

Alan de Quincey was born at Nowa Sol in Silesia (now Poland) on 28 November 1940, but was educated in England and spent his youth in Sussex. He discovered Orthodoxy through his early interest in monasticism. On leaving school he entered the novitiate at Prinknash Abbey, but left after six months and found employment at the Catholic bookshop, Ducketts in the Strand. After a few years he left Britain for Belgium, where he spent a year at Chevetogne Abbey, a community committed to Christian unity and celebrating both Eastern & Western rites, which enabled him to become familiar with the Byzantine rite in a Benedictine setting. From there, in 1963 he travelled to the Levant and, after visiting the Holy Places, he went to Mount Lebanon where he met the Melkite Patriarch, Maximos IV Sayegh (1878-1967), and the Roumanian Orthodox Archimandrite Andre Scrima (1925-2000); who recommended that he might enter the Antiochian Orthodox Monastery of Saint George, Deir el-Harf,  set in the midst of a pine forest that covers Ras el-Matn Mountain in Lebanon and situated on an open hill at 1050m, the monastery overlooks the Mediterranean Sea as well as the Mountains and is only 33km from Beirut.

It was during his sojourn at Deir el-Harf that he was received into the Greek Orthodox Church. He received a grant from the Greek government to read theology at Athens University, but after two years he decided to abandon his studies, return to the West and join a new Western Orthodox monastic foundation in France. This venture, centred in a former Cistercian Abbey, was short-lived and he left with his spiritual father, Hieromonk Gabriel Bultman. After several years of peregrinations, he settled down for six years in the Alps of Provence to lead a solitary life. This culminated in a spiritual crisis which led him to question and reconsider the nature of his spiritual life and it was shortly after this turning point in 1976 that he met his future wife, Marie Françoise Crebassol, whom he married in London in 1983 and who was to become the mother of their daughter, Mélanie.

He also later met Père Eliyas Leroy who was serving as a priest of the French Orthodox Church (ECOF), which at that time was part of the Roumanian Orthodox Patriarchate but who shortly afterwards transferred to  Eglise Orthodoxe Copte Francaise under Metropolitan Marcos of Toulon and Bishop (now Metropolitan) Athanasios in Marseilles. Through his friendship with Archimandrite Barnabas (Burton) he learned of the union of the British Orthodox Church with the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate, which delighted him because he had long been drawn to the spirituality and theology of the Alexandrian tradition. In 1994 he first met Abba Seraphim and the following year was received into the British Orthodox Church. Although living at that time in Le Pouget, a commune in the Hérault department in the Occitanie region in southern France, he was a frequent traveller to London to visit his elderly mother, who lived in Holland Park, as well as his daughter who, having studied literature at Montpellier University, moved to London to study sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art. During these visits he attended the churches at Charlton and Chatham and frequently accompanied Abba Seraphim to services, conferences and ecumenical gatherings in London and other parts of the country. He was ordained a deacon by Metropolitan Marcos on 15 August 2007 at le Revest-les-Eaux, with the understanding that he could serve both the churches in France and in Britain. He was later ordained priest in 2016. The death of his mother in December 2011 meant that his visits to the UK became less frequent, although he last lunched with Abba Seraphim at Charlton in February 2017, whilst on a visit to meet his new grandchild.

In his later years he also put his historical and cultural knowledge to good use and served as a guide touristique et traducteur at the Le Pouget dolmen (also called Gallardet), some 4,500 years old and one of the largest prehistoric funerary monuments in the region, and certainly one of the most beautiful.

Father Theodore was a widely read and knowledgeable priest with a deep personal understanding and experience of Christian spirituality; yet he possessed a humble and approachable spirit which endeared him to all whom he met. Although cosmopolitan in his own background and experience he exuded a quintessential old-fashioned English charm. He was much loved and always welcomed when he came to serve in British Orthodox churches. Memory Eternal !

Abba Seraphim will commemorate Father Theodore in Memorial prayers which will be said after the Liturgy at Charlton on Pentecost Sunday, 27 May and on the 40th Day after his repose, which will prayed at Babingley on Sunday, 1 July.

On 20 May, during the Divine Liturgy at Christ the Saviour British Orthodox Church at Bournemouth, Abba Seraphim incardinated Hieromonk John, having restored him to the ministry by absolution. Father John previously served in the Anglican Church, but was received into Orthodoxy and ordained by Abba Seraphim in 1994 to serve in Glastonbury. Sadly, in 1997 he left the British Orthodox Church and served in a number of other jurisdictions, but recently requested to return to the Church in which he first became Orthodox. Father John is known for his great love of our indigenous Orthodox saints and wrote a valuable pilgrim’s guide to the holy sites of Glastonbury. Regular weekly celebrations of the Divine Liturgy will now resume at the Bournemouth Church.

On 28 April Abba Seraphim, accompanied by Abba David & Father James, visited Mrs. Hazel Rockcliffe in her new Care Home at Woodlands, Doncaster and were delighted to find her very happy and well cared for there. Hazel is a long-standing member of the Cusworth Church. Returning to Cusworth, they were joined for the Raising of Evening Incense by Father Alexis Raphael of Lincoln and afterwards the clergy dined with Abba Seraphim at The Boat Inn, Sprotbrough.

The next morning, Sunday, 29 April, Abba Seraphim and Abba David concelebrated the Divine Liturgy at Cusworth, assisted by Father James and Reader Vladimir Roze and Abba Seraphim preached on “The Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well”. Afterwards the congregation and clergy shared fellowship over a buffet lunch. As the weather was fine, Cusworth Hall opened the old Hall walled gardens and the Bowling Pavilion at the back of the church to the public. These had been sold to the Council some years ago by the church trustees, who had continued their restoration so that croquet was once again played on the well-manicured green.

On 30 April, it being the fortieth day since the repose of the late Paul Gevriye, Abba Seraphim visited the home of his friend at Horstead Keynes in Sussex, where he had been cared for in his final illness and died, to pray the Memorial Prayers for his repose.

On 10 April at the Downs Crematorium at Brighton, Abba Seraphim officiated at the funeral of Paul Gevriye (1956-2018), a Syrian Orthodox man from Sweden who died whilst staying with friends in England. Paul, whose baptismal name was Abdul Massih (Servant of the Lord) was originally from Aleppo. Having been approached to assist with the funeral, Abba Seraphim spoke of his happy memories of Aleppo before the civil war and his close friendship with Archbishop Mor Gregorios Youhanna Ibrahim of Aleppo, who had been kindnapped by Daesh (Isis) in 2013, but heard nothing of since. He also said that as the British Orthodox Church owed its origins to the goodness and generosity of Metropolitan Julius of Emesa (later Patriarch Mor Ignatius Boutros IV) there was a deep sense of gratitude to the Syrian Orthodox Church and any opportunity to be of service to its faithful was a privilege.

Abba Seraphim and Father James celebrated Holy Week and the Paschal Vigil Liturgy at St. Alban & St. Athanasius Church at Chatham, where Abba Seraphim preached on the Christian Hope of the Resurrection. It was also a great blessing to have Mrs. Jean Scuotto present at all the services, as she was taken ill while cruising in the Mediterranean on a New Year’s holiday and had to be flown to hospital in Portugal. Having made good progress, and through the mercy of God, she was flown back to her home in Chatham at the end of January, where prayers had been offered for her recovery at every service.

Abba David, assisted by Father Alexis Raphael, officiated at the Holy Week services at St. Mark & St. Hubert’s Church at Cusworth Village. During the Paschal Liturgy, Abba David tonsured Vladimir Sandis Roze to the Order of Reader for service at the Cusworth Church.