His Grace Thomas Joseph is a little guy with a flat Jersey accent, a clerical collar and big gold-and-ruby necklace. When he sits on the bishop's throne in St. Ignatius of Antioch Chapel north of Ligonier, his feet barely touch the floor.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette His Grace Thomas Joseph will be enthroned tonight as bishop of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Diocese. Click photo for larger image.

But after a full-dress, incense-and-vestments enthronement ritual this evening in Oakland, Thomas Joseph will be in charge of a huge new Antiochian Orthodox Christian Diocese.

"I'm apprehensive. I'm flattered, but humbled too. It's an awesome responsibility," he said this week. "Being a bishop was never part of my plans."

Change rolled over the Antiochian Church last summer when its leaders gathered in Pittsburgh and carved the growing national denomination into new geographic dioceses.

New bishops were needed to run each of them. Thomas was plucked from a parish in St. Petersburg, Fla.

He traded his "Father" title for "Bishop" last November in Damascus, Syria, where the church has its roots. But this evening the former public school teacher from Paterson, N.J., will be wrapped in a robe of royalty, handed a staff and led to his throne at St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Oakland.

From this day forward he'll be the Bishop of Oakland and the East, in charge of a diocese of 25 churches scattered through West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

His ceremonial enthronement at the Dawson Street church sets in motion a domino-drop of ecclesiastical changes.

First they'll have to repaint the signs at St. George Church, a gold-domed landmark for a half-century. It will become a cathedral, the seat of the newly formed diocese.

The Rev. John Abdalah, pastor at St. George, will become dean of the cathedral.

Antiochian Village in Fairfield, Westmoreland County, a longtime summer leisure center for the nation's 200,000 Antiochian Orthodox believers, will gain more importance with a bishop in residence.

His Grace moved into an apartment there in January, and has since been on the road almost continually, getting to know his priests and parishes, learning on the job how to form them into a functional diocese.

The rural church camp is familiar, he said. He was one of the first camp counselors hired in 1979, when the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese bought the camp from the Presbyterian church.

He played pranks and ran bases and sang 'round campfires each summer through the 1980s, he said, while on summer break from teaching school. He gained a reputation as a mimic, imitating unnamed authorities. He giggled at the memory of those days. It was here he heard the call to priesthood.

His years as a teacher, youth minister and priest were perfect job training, he said, but he still feels his only real bishop qualification is celibacy. He never married.

"Our church has married clergy, but you have to get married before you're ordained. Only unmarried priests can become bishops," he said. "That first ordination, to the diaconate -- that was dramatic. My life truly changed then. I was 35. I'd always imagined a wife, children ... but I knew God wasn't calling me to that life. I had to lay it aside. Sometimes it's trying. But most of the time I feel it's worthwhile."

Orthodox Christians are neither Catholic nor Protestant. The church began in the Middle East and Greece, areas where Christianity first flourished. Christianity split in two in the 11th century. "The Great Schism" resulted in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Protestantism broke out in Catholic Western Europe about 500 years later.

Meanwhile, back in the Orthodox East, the churches took on national flavors: thus the Antiochian, Greek, Russian, Serbian and other Orthodox denominations that traveled to Western Pennsylvania mill towns with immigrant workers.

Generally speaking, Orthodox churches have a complex hierarchy similar to Catholicism, and a central authority based in Constantinople. Almost all Orthodox churches share in their communion and celebrations -- several bishops and priests from other Orthodox jurisdictions will appear at Thomas' ceremony today.

Unlike most Antiochian Orthodox clergy, Thomas grew up in the denomination. His father was a security guard. His mother worked at Sears. They descended from Lebanese and Syrian immigrants whose church was the center of their ethnic identity, Thomas said.

In recent decades, Antiochian Orthodoxy managed to hang onto its traditional conservatism while taking on some of the language and evangelistic fervor of its North American neighbors. The church has welcomed hundreds of converts, many from evangelical Protestant backgrounds. It doubled in size in the past two decades; it now boasts 240 churches and missions in the United States and Canada.

"It's not our goal to fit in here. Our purpose is to maintain a personal lifeline with Christ," the bishop said. "We offer America Christian tradition that's not been changed by passing times and places."

The church still has its share of Nassers and Abdalahs, names that connect to its Middle East roots, but these days the priesthood is dominated by converts, he said, priests with names like Reardon and O'Callahan. Bishop Mark Maymon, one of Thomas' "brother bishops" who recently served an Antiochian Orthodox church in Beaver Falls, will be enthroned next week as Bishop of Toledo and the Midwest. He was baptized a Roman Catholic, and discovered Orthodoxy while a student at Oral Roberts University.

"The church is being successful, so we don't intend to change a lot of things," Bishop Thomas said. "I just hope you see more one-on-one evangelism in coming years, more souls coming into the church because their friend or neighbor invited them. And I'd like to see more people learn what Orthodox Christianity is. Maybe in the next 25 years people will know there's a difference between an Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Christian."

After the excitement of the weekend's rites, banquets, art shows and gatherings is past, Bishop Thomas said he'll continue in the simple path laid out to him by Metropolitan Philip, his boss in Brooklyn, N.Y.: "Visit all your people. Be efficient. And always be concerned about your own salvation, because you're teaching by example out there."