Man with a Mission

The third floor of an old limestone house at 3323 North Kenmore Avenue on Chicago's North Side is the headquarters of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church's small (nine members) Society of Clerks Secular of St. Basil, founded in 1931. It is also the rectory of St. Thomas Eastern Orthodox Church and the home of a Stewart-Warner production control clerk. The clerk's name, as written on his doorbell card: "The Very Reverend Cyprian Matthiesen, Society of St. Basil."

John Frederick Matthiesen (Cyprian is his patron saint) is an ascetic-looking, 29-year-old Eastern Orthodox missionary who was raised a Missouri Lutheran. For four years he has been working full-time in the punch-press department at Stewart-Warner (artillery fuses), at $30 a week. Purpose: 1) to support himself, his mother and brother; 2) to earn money to build a church.

In the Society of Clerks Secular of St. Basil, Father Matthiesen believes that he has found a nonnational, nonracial avenue for carrying the message of Orthodox Catholicism to Western people in their own terms. So far he has made some 30 converts among the Danes, Swedes, Poles and Germans in the neighborhood of his church at 3716 West Belmont Avenue.

Last week Father Matthiesen had reached the $2,000 mark in his personal church lund; others' contributions had added $1,000. It was not much money, but the church would be a modest one: simple." "possibly in early American style -- very

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