News in Brief

Today, Feb. 19, is the feast day of St. Filothei, who was born in 1522 in Ottoman-occupied Athens.

Both of Filothei’s parents were descended from noble Byzantine families, and Filothei was the couple’s only and dearly-beloved child. She was renowned for her extensive philanthropy for the Christian faithful, amid the harsh rule of the Ottoman Turks in the area.

St. Filothei, among others, opened a shelter for mistreated women and established the first school for girls during the dour Ottoman occupation of Greece.

Orthodoxia Νews Αgency today features extensive information and material on the life and death of the Martyr Filothei in our website.

The site of the saint’s tomb was also opened to worshippers on Tuesday . It is located in a crypt next to a church dedicated to the Saint. During the Middle Ages, the crypt led to a 300-meter underground tunnel that ended at the nearby monastery at the Kalogreza site.

In other news, a meeting today between members of a committee of dialogue – established by the Church of Greece’s Holy Synod – and Greek Education Minister Kostas Gavroglu, was concluded in the early afternoon.

Committee members later issued a statement related to the meeting, first stressing that representatives of both the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece, and well as the Church of Crete, are in full agreement and aligned in their positions over a set of proposals to alter Church-state relations through constitutional revisions. Both Church representatives also cited their position to maintain, as is, the current payroll regime for Orthodox clerics in the country, in line with a relevant decision by the Association of Clerics of Greece.

At the same time, because the proposed framework of dialogue with the government includes the issue of the payroll regime — something that exceeds the committee’s mandate — members decided to refer the issue to the Standing Holy Synod.

The Metropolitan of Glyfada, Pavlos, passed away in the early morning hours of Tuesday at an Athens-area hospital. A funeral service will be held on Thursday, Feb. 21, at noon at the St. Constantine and Helen Cathedral in Glyfada, a municipality in coastal southeast Athens.

In international news, according to the official website of the Russian Patriarchate in Moscow, Metropolitan Mitrofan of Gorlovka and Slavyansk was detained at an internal checkpoint in the Ukraine and conveyed to the Slavyansk municipal police station. The hierarch later stated that the incident is the result of efforts to pressure him into accepting the so-called Orthodox Church of the Ukraine.

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