Source: The Week Romanov royal couple and their five children were brutally murdered by Bolsheviks in 1918 The remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra have been exhumed as part of a Russian investigation into the Romanov royal family’s murder. The couple and their children – Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei – were murdered by Bolsheviks in 1918. Nicholas II, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia are buried at Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg after their bodies were discovered in a mass grave in the Urals in 1991. Remains, believed to be Alexei and Maria, were found in…
Browsing: Orthodox Church
Source: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy by Seraphim Danckaert Orthodox Christians often find themselves answering the following question: why is Orthodoxy divided along ethnic lines into different churches? At least officially, the answer to that question has been quite clear: we are not divided; we are one Church, united in faith and worship, with an administrative structure that organizes itself along local lines, in accordance with the ancient traditions and canon law of the first millennium of Christian history. In recent years, however, there’s been a problem: while the answer given above is true in theory, it’s often not implemented in practice.…
Source: Holy Trinity Cathedral, San Franciso CA by Archbishop Gregory (Afonsky) The Russian canonical school of the 19th and 20th centuries studied the question of the Patriarch of Constantinople’s canonical status in the Orthodox Church with care and diligence. For the most part books and monographs on the subject were well-disposed, explaining the Patriarch of Constantinople’s exceptionally high position in the Church both during the Byzantine and Turkish periods as a result of particular historical circumstances. During the Byzantine era the Patriarch of Constantinople, as the hierarch of the imperial capital and bishop of New Rome, received not only the…
Source: Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the USA The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America has released a new study today, “Exploring Orthodox Generosity: Giving in US Orthodox Parishes.” The 138-page report is accompanied by a brief summary that shares the highlights of the study. The study was prepared by the Assembly’s research coordinator, Alexei Krindatch. The study addresses religious giving of Orthodox Christian Church members to their home parishes and to wider religious causes and explores the differences in giving between members of various Orthodox jurisdictions and parishioners according to certain demographics. Based on its findings,…
Source: Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the USA Assembly to Convene 6th Annual Meeting in September The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America will hold its sixth annual meeting September 15-17, 2015 at the Hilton Chicago O’Hare Airport Hotel. This year’s meeting will include two sessions devoted to canonical regional planning. In the first of these sessions, the Assembly’s 12 jurisdictional first hierarchs will have an opportunity to offer their comments on a proposal that has been prepared by the Committee for Canonical Regional Planning for submission to the Great and Holy Council in…
Source: Ekathimerini Greece condemns demolition of orthodox church in Albania Greece has condemned the demolition on Wednesday of an orthodox church in the village of Dhermi, on the southwest coast of Albania. “The destruction of holy sites and objects of worship took place, at least until recently, in the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa, at the hands of jihadists. Today we also saw such an act carried out in our neighboring country, Albania,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Constantinos Koutras told journalists in Athens Wednesday. “No one is more ungrateful than a beneficiary,” he said. Athens was expected…
Source: Orthodox Church in America Torrential rains threaten Sitka’s historic Archangel Michael Cathedral SITKA, AK [OCA] For two weeks, Archpriest Michael Boyle and the faithful of Saint Michael the Archangel Cathedral here have been praying for relief from the torrential rains that have pounded the region and flooded the historic structure’s basement. “While the cathedral, which stands in the middle of the downtown district, has been spared from mudslides, it has been significantly affected by rain—especially over the past 48 hours during which at times up to an inch an hour fell,” said Father Michael on Wednesday, August 19, 2015. …
Source: Orthodox Church in America First American Orthodox chaplain attends World Scout Jamboree Chaplains representing many different faith traditions—including Orthodox Christianity—ministered to an estimated 40,000 scouts from 160 countries at the 23rd World Scout Jamboree in Yamaguchi, Japan in mid-August 2015. For the first time, the American contingent of over 1,900 scouts included an Orthodox Christian chaplain—Archpriest Eric G. Tosi, Secretary of the Orthodox Church in America and member of the Boy Scout’s Religious Relations Task Force. A priest of the Moscow Patriarchate also ministered to Orthodox scouts from Russia. Also present was His Eminence, Metropolitan Ambrosios of Korea of…
Source: St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Patriarch Irinej of Serbia to Deliver Address at St Vladimir’s Seminary on September 11 On Friday, September 11, 2015, the Board of Trustees and Faculty of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary will bestow a Doctor of Divinity degree, honoris causa, upon His Holiness Irinej (Gavrilovic), archbishop of Peć, metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci, and patriarch of Serbia. Patriarch Irinej will also deliver a presentation titled “Theology as a Hope for the Future of the Church.” The patriarch will arrive on the seminary campus, briefly visit Three Hierarchs Chapel, and then proceed to the Academic Convocation. The public…
Source: Ancient Faith Ministries Is Orthodoxy in Decline? Alarming statistics are reported on the decline of Christianity (-8% in seven years) across all denominations in the U.S.; as well as significant data on the Orthodox Church in the U.S. Be the Bee’s Steven Christoforou and Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff, the director of the Orthodox Natural Church Development program, join Kevin Allen to discuss. Click here to listen. [subscribe2]
Source: Daily Sabah Black Sea monastery set to celebrate Orthodox Divine Liturgy The Orthodox faithful from Turkey and around the world will attend the Divine Liturgy at Sümela, a historic monastery in Trabzon, a province in the Black Sea region, on Aug. 15. The mass will be the sixth religious service held since the restoration of the monastery.The monastery, on UNESCO’s temporary list of World Heritage sites, is expected to host the faithful from Russia, Georgia, Greece and other countries with a large Orthodox Christian population. Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, who presided over last year’s liturgy, is expected…
Source: Christ J. Kamages The Earliest Known Prayer to the Theotokos The earliest known prayer to the Theotokos (Greek, Θεοτόκος, meaning “Bearer of God”) is a prayer found on a fragment of papyrus dating back to approximately AD 250. In 1917, the John Rylands Library [1] in Manchester, England, acquired a large panel of Egyptian papyrus. The prayer is located on the fragment recorded as reference number Greek Papyrus 470. The prayer appears to be from a Coptic Christmas liturgy or vespers written in Koine Greek although the fragment in question may be a private copy of the prayer. The prayer is still…