His Beatitude Patriarch Theophilos III of the Holy City of Jerusalem and All Palestine awarded the People’s Deputy of Ukraine Vadim Novinsky with the Golden Cross of the Highest Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher for his service to the Jerusalem Church during their meeting on Wednesday, January 30. “I am sincerely grateful…

Representatives from 11 of the world’s 15 Local Orthodox Churches gathered in Moscow on Friday to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in honor of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia’s 10th anniversary as the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Leading the delegation for the Georgian Orthodox Church was His Eminence Metropolitan Andria…

Violence and persecution against the canonical Ukrainian Church continues to escalate since Constantinople created a new church in December and granted it a tomos of autocephaly in January. Supporters of the schismatic Ukrainian church organized a brawl at Holy Transfiguration Church in the village of Gnezdichno in the Ternopil Province yesterday. Among those injured by…

Work to restore Panayia church in Turkish-occupied Ashia will be completed in the second half of 2019, Takis Hadjidemetriou, the Greek Cypriot Head of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage has told the Cyprus News Agency. The church was recently inundated after floods covered half the building under water. According to Hadjidemetriou, the Technical Committee…

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has received a delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which arrived in Ukraine to participate in the liturgy and the ceremony of enthronement of a Primate of the newly created Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Epifaniy (Epiphanius). “I’d like to convey my warmest congratulations and words…

The Holy Synod of the newly created Orthodox Church in Ukraine is to gather in Kyiv on Monday, February 4 and will be chaired by the church’s leader Epifaniy. “This is not officially, but we were informed that tomorrow the Holy Synod would take place and Epifaniy, the Metropolitan of All Ukraine, will officially take…

The constitutional principle of independence of religious organizations from the state will remain inviolable in Ukraine, President Pyotr Poroshenko said. “I will stress once again: the recently registered Orthodox Church of Ukraine is and will be independent from the state in line with the Constitution of Ukraine. There will be no state church in Ukraine….

The Georgian Orthodox Church sees signs of a ‘threat’ in an interview given by the Chairman of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Patriarchate Metropolitan Hilarion, says the statement of the Georgian Patriarchate released today. Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) said in a TV interview with Russian national broadcaster Russia 24 ‘it is unimaginable that…

In the 4th century AD the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia were settled by people who left behind them a strange reputation. They were the first Christian hermits, who abandoned the cities of the ancient Roman world to live in the solitude and silence of the desert. Why did they do this? The…