Source: Balkan Insight Bulgaria’s staunchly pro-Russian Patriarch has received an award in Moscow along with the Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and the head of the Russian Duma Sergey Naryshkin. by Mariya Cheresheva | BIRN | Bulgaria The head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Neophyte, received the 2015 annual award of the International Foundation for the Unity of the Orthodox Peoples in Moscow on Wednesday. The Patriarch was awarded for “his contribution to the unity of Orthodox peoples and the promotion of Christian moral values in society”, along with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and the president of the Russian Duma, Sergey…
Browsing: Moscow
Source: The Moscow Times Orthodox Church Calls for Alternative Financial System in Russia By Anastasia Bazenkova As the Russian economy reels from low oil prices and Western sanctions, the country is seeing rising interest in unorthodox financial solutions, most recently one pitched by the Orthodox Church. Last week, the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry threw its support behind a so-called Orthodox Financial System developed under the aegis of the Moscow Patriarchate and strongly resembling the better known Islamic financial system. “The Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports the creation of the Orthodox Financial System … and is ready to provide its platform for detailed and professional discussion of these questions together with the relevant committees of the chamber,” the chamber’s press service reported last Friday…
Source: TASS Russian News Agency Patriarch Kirill, of Moscow and All Russia, in TASS special project Top Officials INTERVIEW BY ANDREI VANDENKO On parishioners, occasional visitors, Pope Francis, Charlie Hebdo, and Leviathan — In your book ‘Life And Contemplation Of The World’ you wrote that, as a young man, you asked yourself whether a greybeard in his seventies, whom a youth deciding to take the monastic vows would once turn into, would spit at the his own reflection in the mirror. You turned sixty-eight years old recently… – The essence of the formula is that the choice I make as a…
Source: Voices from Russia The website of Novospassky Monastery noted that on 5 February, a Greek Orthodox Church delegation, headed by Metropolitan Panteleimon Kalpakidis of Veria and Naousa arrived in Moscow from Greece bringing a reliquary containing the hand of St Demetrios of Salonika the Great Martyr. At the airport, the superior of the Novospassky Stavropegial Monastery and the MP First Deputy Chancellor, Bishop Savva Mikheyev of Voskresensk met the delegation. From the airport, they took the reliquary to the Novospassky Monastery, where the clergy served a molieben at the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God. St Demetrios is the patron saint of…
Source: Aleteia The Vatican’s ecumenical default positions badly need re-setting. by GEORGE WEIGEL In his tireless work for Christian unity, St. John Paul II often expressed the hope that Christianity in its third millennium might “breathe again” with its “two lungs:” West and East, Latin and Byzantine. It was a noble aspiration. And when he first visited Orthodoxy’s ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople in 1979, perhaps the successor of Peter imagined that his heartfelt desire to concelebrate the Eucharist with the successor of Andrew would be realized in his lifetime. It wasn’t to be, but not for lack of trying on John…
Source: Christian Telegraph The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill led the opening of the International Congress of Orthodox Youth, organized by the Youth Department of Synod on November 18, 2014 in Moscow, reports The Christian Telegraph in reference to “Patriarhiya.ru.” With the support of the Government of Moscow in the framework of the Congress an extensive cultural and educational programs for youth were implemented, themed booths and stands dedicated to different periods of the history of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church were organized, as well as master classes and a number of other activities. Before the meeting…
Source: Pravoslavie.ru [Moscow] Construction of the Orthodox Church of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in memory of the victims of the 2002 terrorist attack on the musical theater in Dubrovka (Moscow) have been completed, reported the press service of the State Building Control Committee of Moscow toInterfax on Thursday. The construction, initiated in 2011, was carried out exclusively on charitable endowments. This is the first church whose foundations were laid within the framework of the program for the construction of 200 Orthodox churches in Moscow. Its foundation stone was blessed in April 2011 by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia in…
Source: The Christian Science Monitor By the Monitor’s Editorial Board As violence escalates in Ukraine, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church appears to distance himself from President Putin, calling for healing and reconciliation. Churches that align with the state often learn the hard way that Caesar has his own kingdom. The struggle over Ukraine’s future took a worrisome turn Friday when more than 40 people died in political unrest between demonstrators in the port city of Odessa. The tragedy is seen by some as the start of further large-scale violence. But there is an alternative path that can reconcile the…
Source: The Moscow Times Priests from the Moscow-based Orthodox Church accompanied by armed men have threatened to seize property belonging to a rival church denomination in the Crimea after the peninsula completes its accession to Russia, a Ukrainian prelate said. In one recent case, a Moscow Patriarchate priest from the Black Sea port of Sevastopol arrived at the Crimean village of Perevalnoye with an entourage of armed men and demanded to see documentation of property belonging to the Kiev Patriarchate there, Crimea’s Archbishop Kliment told Ukraine’s Channel 5 television. The men “started to take inventory of our property and warned…
Source: B92 [TANJUG] Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has presented RS President Milorad Dodik with the award of the International Fund for the Unity of Orthodox Nations. The leader of the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina (RS) received the accolade in Moscow on Tuesday. The award is given for outstanding contribution to improving the unity of Orthodox Christian peoples and consolidating and promoting Christian values in society. The ceremony at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was attended by Serbian film director of Bosnian origin, Emir Kusturica, and a large number of diplomats and dignitaries from the public life of Russia, reported…
Source: RIA Novosti MOSCOW, December 18 (RIA Novosti) – The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church presented the nation’s answer to Frank Sinatra with a top award on Wednesday for his public service, adding to the flamboyant now-lawmaker’s already glittering array of decorations. Patriarch Kirill awarded Joseph Kobzon, who has in the past been denied a US visa over his purported links to organized crime, the Order of Glory and Honor second degree for the crooner’s work in “developing national culture and the moral and patriotic education of his contemporaries.” Kobzon, who turned 76 in September, was a hit singer…
Source: Orthodox Church in America YONKERS, NY [SVOTS Communications]- The Dean and Chancellor/CEO of Saint Vladimir’s Seminary here—Archpriest Dr. John Behr and Archpriest Dr. Chad Hatfield—signed an agreement with Saints Cyril and Methodius Theological Institute of Post-Graduate Studies in Moscow, laying the foundation for the establishment of the “Saint Philaret of Moscow Russian House of Studies” at Saint Vladimir’s. The cooperative statement was signed at the culmination of the Dean and Chancellor’s visit to Russia October 7–14, 2013. The Russian House of Studies, a part of the seminary’s International Houses of Studies program, will welcome the exchange of teachers and…