News

Millions risk starvation in Zimbabwe

The UN says Zimbabwe is facing a food crisis, with more than five million people in need of food aid. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a drought that is threatening millions in the country with starvation. President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Tuesday declared the drought a national disaster. The situation has been compounded a by cyclone and an economic crisis which has seen basic items such as rice and sugar double in price since June.The United Nations and the Government have launched an appeal for $331 million to help those in need. Of that amount, the UN World Food Programme WFP is calling for $173 million. The funds will be used for food aid, provision of water, sanitation and cash based assistance said the Head of Communications for WFP in the Zimbabwean capital Harare, Ashley Baxstrom.

Filaret calls on his flock to protest against Epiphany

The head of Kiev Patriarchate believes that liquidation of the UOC-KP will lead to destruction of Ukrainian statehood, while Epiphany Dumenko is behind all lawlessness.

On August 4, 2019, speaking in the Cathedral of the UOC-KP, Filaret Denisenko called on his parishioners to protest against the head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko.

Statement in relation to the properties of Jaffa GateATE

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem views the attempts of the radical organization, Ateret Cohanim, to seize church properties located in Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate and al-Mu’athamiyah, as a strike to the indigenous Christian presence in the Holly City. The Patriarchate affirms that changing the Status Quo in the Old City of Jerusalem, especially in Jaffa Gate; being the main entrance to the various Patriarchates and to the pilgrim route to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,  threatens the continuous hundreds-of-years old mosaic and balance that shores the good relations between Jerusalemites of different faiths.

Petros Sasaki: a master from Japan settled in Finland

RIISA, the Museum of the Finnish Orthodox Church in Kuopio, has organized an exhibition on the painter and iconography teacher Petros Sasaki, who succeeded in renewing the Orthodox iconography in this country.

Petros Sasaki was a Japanese Orthodox born in 1939 in Ōdate, a town located in the northern part of Honshu Island. After graduating from high school in 1958, he entered the Orthodox Seminary in Tokyo in 1961. In 1964, he left to study art in Athens, where he remained until 1967. There, he met a Finnish student Johannes Seppälä (1944-2017), and they became friends. Johannes Seppälä is particularly known for the large number of his translations of Greek texts into Finnish. He was ordained a deacon in 1967 and a priest in Greece in June 1972. The Finn spoke of his friend to the then head of the Finnish Orthodox Church, Archbishop Paul (Olmari – 1914-1988). The latter encouraged the young Japanese to come to Finland to develop iconography there.

17th Century St. Stephanos Church Re-Opens in Hochants Village after Renovation

Tufenkian Charitable Foundation, Artsakh’s Ministry of Culture, Youth and Tourism and Armenian Apostolic Church recently completed the restoration of Saint Stepanos church in the village of Hochants in liberated Kashatagh region.

Dean and Armenian Orthodox Seminarians Attacked by Extremist Jews in Jerusalem

On Saturday, June 8, 2019, a group of Armenian Seminarians and the dean of the Seminary were attacked by three extremist Jews and their dog.

On that day in the afternoon a group of 20 students of the Armenian Theological Seminary, accompanied by the dean of the Seminary, left the Armenian Theological Seminary for the weekly procession in the Holy Sepulcher.