Source: Public Orthodoxy Inga Leonova Editor-in-Chief at The Wheel Journal On Friday, February 16, 2024, Russian Penitentiary Service (FSIN) that is responsible for the thriving GULAG system informed the world that Russia’s “Prisoner no. 1,” Alexey Navalny, collapsed during the daily walk in the camp and died shortly thereafter. While everyone who cared about Navalny had feared for his life every day since January 17, 2021, when he returned to Russia after recovering in Germany from an assassination attempt by the Kremlin, the news still came as a gut-punching shock. Despite three years of imprisonment in inhuman, torturous conditions, despite…
Browsing: martyrdom
Source: Public Orthodoxy by George Demacopoulos In 1095, Pope Urban II told a large gathering of knights in Southern France that it was their responsibility to avenge the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land (he did not mention that the conquest had occurred nearly 500 years earlier). Urban’s sermon led to the First Crusade, and it forever changed the dynamics between Western Europe, Eastern Christianity, and the Islamic world. From a Christian theological perspective, Urban introduced an entirely novel—some might say heretical—way of thinking about the relationship between Christian piety and violence. Near the end of his sermon, Urban declared, “Set out on…
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…
Source: The Catholic World Report Vatican City, May 12, 2015 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a message sent Sunday to the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Francis said advances toward reconciliation are strengthened by the martyrs and that Christians must unite to confront shared global challenges. “Today more than ever we are united by the ecumenism of blood, which further encourages us on the path towards peace and reconciliation,” Pope Francis wrote May 10 to Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria. Like the Bishop of Rome, the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria is known as “Pope” to his…
Source: Orthodox Christian Network By Fr. John Parker in The Sounding I am an unworthy man, unworthy to be called an Orthodox Christian, not to speak of the priesthood, and I write, admittedly, from the comfort of my Mount Pleasant, SC, home. There is no Mount nearby, but it is, indeed, a pleasant seaside community on the East Coast of the United States. As such, I ask myself: how to deal with ruthless, pitiless, pitiful souls who are so darkened that their life is spent taking the life of others—and worse, thinking that they are doing this at the direction…
Source: Kenneth E Hines Blog Rasha called her fiance Atef on his cell phone. A rebel answered and told her that they captured Atef and had given him the option of converting to Islam. He refused. So they slit his throat. Atef was engaged to be married to Rasha. They are Christians and they lived in the ancient Christian village of Maaloula in Syria where the residents still speak Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Earlier this month the village was attacked by rebels of the Free Syrian Army made up of Jihadist factions from all over the Middle East including…