Moscow, December 10, Interfax – The so-called unification gathering due to be held in Ukraine will not be legitimate without the participation of canonical Church hierarchs, according to Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations. “Let us not forget that there are 90 archbishops in the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church,…

Priests and laity publish messages on Facebook with words of support to clerics who were summoned to SBU for questioning. On December 9, 2018, Protopriest Vasiliy Nachev launched a flashmob in support of the canonical Church, as well as his fellow priests from the Rovno eparchy, who were called in for questioning by the Security…

The official glorification among the saints of Hieromartyr Konstantin Veretsky was celebrated in Rostov-on-Don on Friday, December 7. According to the site of the Rostov-on-Don Diocese, he is the first hieormartyr from the city to be canonized for Church-wide veneration. The decision to canonize St. Konstantin and include him in the Synaxis of the New…

Kiev, December 10, Interfax – Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko will undertake every necessary measure to have Ukrainian naval sailors detained in the Kerch Strait released from custody, the press service of the presidential executive office said. Poroshenko said that to that end he addressed the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate….

The nominees for the 2019 Grammy Awards were announced on Friday, and notably, a Russian-American Orthodox choir is among the nominees. In particular, the Patriarch Tikhon Russian-American Music Institute’s (PaTRAM) latest album, “Teach Me Thy Statutes,” featuring works of Pavel Chesnokov, under the direction of Maestro Vladimir Gorbik, has been nominated in the Best Choral…

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Orthodox Church visited the Demilitarized Zone of the two Koreas on Saturday, December 8, 2018 where he led a special prayer for peace and unification. The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a weapons-free buffer zone between North and South Korea. The area was established on July 27, 1953 when the…

CHICAGO (CBS) — Members of a historic church in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood are fighting to keep it off the auction block this month. Members of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church are praying for a miracle to prevent the church from closing. The church is about $8 million in debt, and the building is set…

President Moon met with the head of the Orthodox Church — the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew the First. The South Korean leader said he greatly appreciates the patriarch’s dedication to the movement to reconcile different religions and sects as well as to the conservation of ecology and the environment. He asked for the Patriarch’s wisdom and…

Romania ranks first among 34 countries in Europe included in an analysis of Pew Research Center, which looked at the countries’ levels of religious commitment. The study took into account four common measures of religious observance, namely religious service attendance, prayer frequency, belief in God and self-described importance of religion in one’s life. According to the…