Savas Zembillas '79 (featured in Colby, summer 2000) was ordained a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in February in a ceremony in New York City.

His Grace Bishop Savas, as Zembillas is now addressed according to church protocol, was an accomplished actor and occasional punk rocker at Colby, where he majored in English and philosophy. He was ordained Bishop of Troas and will continue to serve as chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, based in New York.

In attendance at his five-hour ordination were prominent church officials from the U.S. and Greece, Zembillas's parents, Steve and Stamatia Zembillas, of Crown Point, Ind., and Colby friends Robert Lizza '79 and Sean Smith '79.

Bishop Savas reported in an e-mail to Colby that his recent church business included accompanying His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who was in New York to attend a dinner at which former President George Bush and Barbara Bush were awarded the Patriarch Athenagoras Award for Human Rights. That same week the newly ordained bishop was among church officials scheduled to meet in Washington with the patriarch and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

But the bishop's days are not all decorum and dignitaries.

"It's been a busy time," he wrote from his Manhattan offices. "The September 11 event hit us hard. I've been to Ground Zero many times, from Day 2 onwards, in the company of Archbishop Demetrios, as the Twin Towers collapsed on one of our churches, Saint Nicholas . . . and we have conducted frequent memorial services on the site itself."