Orthodox Churches

Return of the Icon of Theotokos to the Dependency in Gethsemane

On the morning of Monday, the 23^rd of August/5^th of September 2016, day of the Apodosis [Leavetaking] of the Dormition of Theotokos, the icon of the Dormition was ritually returned from the Tomb of the Mother of God in Gethsemane – wherein it was kept since the 12^th/25^th of August 2016 – to the Dependency of Gethsemane opposite the Church of the Resurrection.

John X in Jordan to participate in the general assembly of the Middle East Council of Churches

His Beatitude arrived in Amman to participate in the general assembly of the Middle East Council of Churches.

His Beatitude had departed to Amman, through Beirut. Just before departing, he visited H.E. Metropolitan  Elias (Aoude),of Beirut and dependencies, at the center of the bishopric, who accompanied him to the airport.

Patriarch of Jerusalem addresses "Restoration, Conservation of religious monuments and sites of veneration" event

On the afternoon of Wednesday, the 17^th/31^st of August 2016, an event entitled “Restoration, Conservation of Religious Monuments and Sites of Veneration” was hosted by Metropolitan Timotheos of Bostra at the Exarchate of the Holy Sepulchre in Nicosia, organized by Professor A. Moropoulou, project co-ordinator for the restoration of the Aedicula of the Holy Sepulchre.

Patriarch Kirill flies to Russia’s northernmost city

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has arrived in Russia’s northernmost city of Pevek. The visit of the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Chukotka autonomous region began on Tuesday with this Arctic port city located on the shores of the Chaun Bay in the East Siberian Sea.

During his visit to Chukotka the patriarch will lay the foundation stones of two new churches in permafrost - in Pevek and near the Ugolny airport servicing Anadyr, the administrative center of the Chukotka autonomous region, and meet with local reindeer breeders.

Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople calls everyone “to mobilize forces and to pray in the fight to protect the environment “

Dear friends, today the Patriarch of Constantinople wrote of the need to sensitize all people of the urgent ecological problems facing our planet today, including the adverse consequences produced by companies, “which can be, and are proving very dangerous and catastrophic for creation and life of living beings on earth.”  We are facing the “threat or even the destruction of ‘ natural environment”.

He went on:

"It requires constant vigilance, training and education so that it is clear the relationship of the current ecological crisis with human passions of greed, greed, selfishness, rapacious greed, the result of which is the result passions is the environmental crisis we live. Therefore constitutes only way, the return to the ancient beauty of order and economy, moderation and asceticism, which can lead to the wise management of the natural environment. Especially, the greed with the satisfaction of material needs, leads with certainty to the spiritual poverty of man, which calls for the destruction of the natural environment: “The roots of the ecological crisis are spiritual and ethical, inherent in everyone’s heart man”, he said the quoted Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church, by contacting the present world,” the desire of rising prosperity and unbridled consumerism lead inevitably disproportionate use and depletion of natural resources “(cfr. decision on text “the mission of the Church”).

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk visits Serbian Patriarch

His Holiness Irinej, Serbian Patriarch, received in audience His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Serbian Patriarchate in Belgrade on 30 August 2016.

The audience was attended by members of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Their Graces Bishop Irinej of Backa, Justin of Zica and Fotije of Dalmatia, as well as by members deputies His Eminence Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral and His Grace Bishop Teodosije of Raska-Prizren.