Orthodox Churches

The Feast of Ascension in Jerusalem

On Thursday May 4/17, 2018, the Patriarchate celebrated the Feast of the Ascension at the place where the Lord was ascended in heaven before the eyes of His Holy Disciples, the Holy Shrine of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives.

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk meets with Primate of Polish Orthodox Church

On 18 May 2018, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, arrived in Poland. At the residence of Primates of the Polish Orthodox Church, the DECR chairman met with His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland.

Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) celebrates farewell Liturgy at Sretensky Monastery

His Eminence Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov and Porkhov, newly appointed to that position, celebrated his farewell Divine Liturgy at Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery today.

Thousands gathered in the monastery’s Church of the Resurrection of Christ and the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church for Vladyka Tikhon’s heartfelt and moving last service as the abbot of the monastery that he had led into renewal beginning in the mid-1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

New Orthodox church consecrated in Republic of the Congo

A new Orthodox church, named in honor of the Holy Martyr Photini, known in the Gospels as the Samaritan Woman, was consecrated on Sunday May 6, the day when the holy Church read the Gospel account of her meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ at the well, in the Republic of the Congo’s coastal city of Pointe Noire, reports Sedmitza. The new church is already the third Orthodox parish in the city.

New Book of Hours published in Chinese

A new liturgical book has been published in two Chinese translations for the enrichment of the daily prayer and liturgical life of the Orthodox faithful in China.

The new Chinese version of The Book of Hours contains the texts of the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 9th Hours, and of Vespers, Matins, Compline, and the Midnight Office, reports the site of the Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Hong Kong.

The texts have been compiled into and published in three volumes, referring to the classical translation of the Beijing Ecclesiastical Mission. Proper names in the text have been translated in accordance with the Chinese Union Version Bible text.

Ancient Georgian and Western saints officially added to Russian Church calendar

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church has formally resolved to officially include two ancient Georgian and three ancient Western saints into its liturgical calendar, reports the Russian Church’s official website. The decision was taken after hearing a report from His Eminence Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk, chairman of the commission for the compilation of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Menaion, or calendar of saints, with the proposal to include two ancient Georgian saints and three ancient saints who labored in Western lands before the Great Schism of 1054.