Source: The National Herald By Associated Press CONSTANTINOPLE (AP) — A senior official in the Orthodox Church says “there’s no going back” in granting Ukrainian clerics full ecclesiastic independence from the Russian Orthodox Church. However, Metropolitan Emmanuel of France, who is part of a committee dealing with the Ukrainian question, told The Associated Press that the final step of the procedure has yet to be reached. His comments came as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I welcomed Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Istanbul on Friday. Ukraine’s president has launched a campaign to persuade Bartholomew, seen by many as the first among equals…
Browsing: Russian Orthodox Church
Patriarch Kirill arriving in Istanbul
Source: Department of External Church Relations – The Russian Orthodox Church On August 31, 2018, His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, arrived in Istanbul. The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church visited the Patriarchate of Constantinople, where, accompanied by Metropolitans Emmanuel of France and Bartholomew of Smyrna, as well as Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations (DECR) and Archpriest Nikolay Balashov, DECR vice-chairman, he venerated the shrines of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Holy Protomartyr George. After that, a fraternal meeting took place at the building of the Patriarchate…
Source: Orthodox Christianity [Ekaterinburg, July 17, 2018] The Russian Orthodox Church has been celebrating the centenary of the martyrdom of the last imperial family of Russia with numerous events throughout Russia all year, with the celebrations culminating in last night’s Patriarchal Divine Liturgy in Ekaterinburg and all-night cross procession in their honor. 100,000 faithful Orthodox Christians from around the world, including Azerbaijan, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Lithuania, Moldova, New Zealand, Serbia, USA, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, France, Estonia, South Korea, and Japan, gathered in Ekaterinburg last night for the liturgical celebrations, reports the site of…
Luchenko said Putin is “less interested” in burying the ex-royal family’s remains while his predecessor Yeltsin saw it as “personal repentance.”
Putin “does not worship Nicholas II. His heroes are Alexander III and Alexander Nevsky,” she said, referring to Nicholas II’s father and a 13th-century leader.
Nonetheless, she called the dispute an “uncomfortable situation” for Putin, who has positioned himself as a close ally of the Church.
“It somehow frustrates (the Kremlin),” she said, adding that authorities want to “draw a line under this situation.”
In 2015, at the Church’s request, Russia reopened its criminal investigation into the remains of Alexei and Maria, reportedly exhuming Alexander III. But three years on, no results have been announced.
“The Church has not formulated a position on the results of the investigation,” Patriarch Kirill said last November.
Father Kurayev accused the Church of not wanting to make the results public, suggesting they match previous tests.
“They made a mistake with the science and now they are reluctant to take a step back.”
Source: Arab News MOSCOW: Next week’s centenary of the execution of Russia’s last tsar has reignited a long-running conflict between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church over what to do with the murdered royal family’s remains. Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Monday will lead a procession marking 100 years since the Bolsheviks shot dead tsar Nicholas II and his family after he abdicated. But the Church — dominated by hard-liners — is still divided over the authenticity of the remains of the family, whose members were all sainted in 2000. Bolshevik forces shot Nicholas, his German-born wife Alexandra and their…
Source: TASS Russian News Agency The Kremlin comments on the possible decision to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to the Kiev Patriarchate MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. Moscow opposes steps seeking to split churches, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said commenting on the possible decision to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church reporting to the Kiev Patriarchate. “Of course, certain moves aimed at church schisms are bound to neither be supported nor welcomed,” the Kremlin spokesman told reporters. In light of that, he recalled the stance of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Patriarch of Moscow and…
Source: BBC News An intimate view of the doomed Russian royal family has been captured in a rarely seen collection of photographs. The images were brought back to England by Charles Sydney Gibbes – tutor to the children of Tsar Nicholas II – whose unique access to the Romanovs helped him to picture them in unguarded and informal poses. The son of a bank manager from the Yorkshire town of Rotherham, Gibbes made the decision to teach English abroad after graduating from Cambridge University. By 1908, seven years after arriving in Russia as a 25-year-old, he was tutor to the…
Source: Catholic Herald by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith Catholics would agree with much of what Metropolitan Hilarion has said, but what can we actually do? Metropolitan Hilarion, who is the ‘foreign minister’ of the Russian Orthodox Church, has recently been in London, where he gave a speech at a conference organised by the Russian Embassy. The Russian Embassy website reproduces the speech in toto here. The Russian Orthodox Church website gives a list of participants at the symposium, which was focused on the Christian Future of Europe. The speech given by Hilarion was certainly interesting, and revelatory of the thought of the Russian Church. He…
Source: The Christian Post By Jay Gotera , Christian Post Contributor And it’s the real Santa Claus—St. Nicholas himself, a relic of the actual saint who inspired the beloved figure of Santa Claus. The relic of the fourth-century saint arrived in Moscow for veneration by the Russian Orthodox Church on May 22 from Italy—the first time in 930 years that the relic was moved out of Italy, Breitbart reported. It will be on display at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow up to July 13, according to RT.com. The relic is a five-inch bone fragment from the saint’s rib placed in…
Source: Interfax-Religion Moscow, March 27, Interfax – The Moscow Patriarchate will continue including names of the saints venerated in the West in its calendar. “This process is not completed, it has only started,” head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk said on the Church and the World program on the Rossiya-24 TV channel. As was reported, in early March the Moscow Patriarchate included in its calendar St. Patrick and 15 ancient saints glorified in the countries of Europe before the church schism of 1054. St. Patrick the Enlightener of Ireland was among them. It was…
A snowman stands in front of the St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia, Jan. 13, 2017. The Hermitage Museum Director Mikhail Piotrovsky has urged the head of the Russian Orthodox Church to recall its bid for control of the landmark.
Source: Voice of America ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA — The director of a museums’ association has urged the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church to recall its bid to take control of St. Petersburg’s landmark cathedral, a move that has inflamed public passions in Russia. Several hundred people rallied outside St. Isaac’s Cathedral earlier this month. The cathedral is technically a museum, and critics of the plan fear that its transfer from city authorities to the church may inhibit public access. Another protest is set for the weekend despite church officials seeking to assuage protests by vowing that access won’t be…
Source: Pravoslavie.ru Moscow, January 17, 2017 The St. Petersburg Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church is calling upon all faithful to sensibly approach Theophany “bathing” in fonts, pools, creeks, and ponds, neither for sport nor for forgiveness of sins. “There is a belief that if you immerse yourself in a font, you will wash away all your sins. I hasten to disappoint you,” says Fr. Bogdan Polevoi of the Joy of All Who Sorrow podvoriye of the Holy Trinity-Zelenesk Monastery, “but this is absolutely not true. If you led an indecent life for a whole year, allowing yourself anything, and…
Source: Russia Today The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has consecrated a new cathedral in central Paris, just yards away from the Eiffel Tower, with hundreds of worshippers attending the service he led there on Sunday. Trinity Cathedral was opened as part of a Russian cultural and spiritual center on the banks of the Seine River in the French capital. Around 500 Orthodox believers from the Russian community in Paris, including the offspring of Russia’s former princely houses, packed the church for the event. Renowned French singer, Mireille Mathieu, and Russian super-model, Natalia Vodianova, were also attending.…