Browsing: russia

Source: NBC News Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko believes the potential outcome of Saturday’s meeting represents an “opportunity that arises once in a millennium.” By Yuliya Talmazan One of Christianity’s biggest splits in centuries is expected to be formalized this weekend as Ukraine moves to create a new church independent from Russia’s influence. It’s estimated that more than 70 percent of Ukrainians — or nearly 32 million people — identify as religious. The overwhelming majority of them are Orthodox Christian. But they don’t all pray in the same churches. There are currently three separate branches of the Orthodox church in Ukraine, including one under…

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Source: Moscow Times A Russian Orthodox cathedral set to be built for the country’s armed forces will reportedly train military priests, the head of a foundation in charge of collecting donations for its construction has said. Blueprints for the Armed Forces cathedral were reportedly unveiled at the Venice Bienalle on Thursday, two months after the Russian Defense Ministry began collecting donations to build the megastructure. Reports this year disclosed plans to trainpriests embedded with the Airborne Troops to drive combat vehicles and operate communication equipment. “A school for military priests is being built and the institute of Sisters of Charity [nurses] will…

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Source: Byzantine, TX How reasoned and gentle are these responses by the Albanian Church? Well worth reading now and I suspect these letters will be read many years from now when this unpleasantness is written about by historians. (Albanian Church) – Views of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania regarding the Ukrainian ecclesiastical question On the 22nd of November, 2018, Russian sources released selected excerpts [and even some websites published articles with manipulative titles, dates, and arbitrary assessments] from the letter by His Beatitude Anastasios, the Archbishop of Tirana, Durres and All Albania to His Beatitude Kirill, the Patriarch of Moscow…

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Source: National Catholic Register NEWS ANALYSIS: Pope Francis cautions Catholics not to ‘meddle’ in ecclesiological conflict between the Orthodox Church of Constantinople and the Russian Orthodox Church. Victor Gaetan The accelerating dispute in Ukraine between two Orthodox Churches — the Church of Constantinople, a historic Church with spiritual prestige, and the 140-million-member Russian Orthodox Church, a powerhouse in terms of membership muscle, political clout and wealth — is ominous because it forecasts conflict in a country already suffering a “fratricidal” war, to use Pope Francis’ term. The Russian Orthodox Church broke Eucharistic communion with the Church of Constantinople Oct. 15 in response…

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Source: The Conversation by Alexander Titov The Moscow Patriarchate recently announced that it is breaking its ties with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, triggering what is potentially the biggest split in the Orthodox Church in a thousand years. So why is one of the great defenders of Christianity tearing itself apart? The tussle between Moscow and Constantinople is over Ukraine, and Constantinople’s declaration on October 15 that the Ukrainian church is no longer part of Moscow’s patrimony. And behind this is Ukraine’s divided national identity – and the woes of its current president. There have long been two main Ukrainian identities: Eastern Slavic (or Little Russian)…

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Source: Orthodoxia.info Andreas Loudaros Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew yesterday sent a clear message to Russia vis-à-vis the Ukraine issue, stating that Constantinople has no intention whatsoever of giving in to pressure. While addressing an audience at an event in Istanbul celebrating the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Feriköy Greek community, His All-Holiness made it clear that the prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate are rooted in the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils and legally binding for all within Orthodoxy. “Whether our Russian brothers like it or not, soon enough they will get behind the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s solution, as they will…

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Source: The New York Times By Neil MacFarquhar MOUNT ATHOS, Greece — The skulls, lined up five deep on wooden shelves, date back hundreds of years, with the names of the more recently deceased scratched onto their foreheads — Monk Theolothelis, 91, 26-6-1986, or Monk Kyprianos, 100, 14-8-87. They are exhibited in Xenophontos Monastery here on Mount Athos, a peninsula in northern Greece that is the spiritual heart of the Eastern Orthodox Church. One skull carries a more philosophical message: “Brother, Look at the glory of man.” That invitation to reflect on mortality encapsulates why the dead are exhumed and their…

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Source: RT News n the biggest rift in modern Orthodox history, the Russian Orthodox Church has cut all ties with the Constantinople Patriarchate, after it accepted a breakaway division of Ukrainian Orthodox Church as independent. The Holy Synod, the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church, has ruled that any further clerical relations with Constantinople are impossible, Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s External Relations Department, told journalists, de facto announcing the breach of relations between the two churches. “A decision about the full break of relations with the Constantinople Patriarchate has been taken at a Synod…

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Source: The Washingon Post By David Stern and Amie Ferris-Rotman KIEV, Ukraine — For centuries, the golden cupolas of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra monastery and catacombs have been a refuge of tranquility and prayer in Orthodox Christianity. It is now caught in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia as it spills into the world of faith. What is at stake is whether the Ukrainian church can formally break away from Russia’s control and become a new autonomous branch among Orthodoxy’s more than a dozen churches. But it also reflects the wider battlegrounds of nationalism and political identity that helped touch off a separatist uprising…

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Source: ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE PERMANENT DELEGATION TO THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES The Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the WCC, Archbishop Job of Telmessos, gave the following interview to Marina Ziosiou of the Greek newspaper “Ethnos of Sunday” about the ecclesiastical issue of autocephaly of Ukraine: The hierarch points out that the Patriarchate of Moscow rejects any dialogue and states that it is strange that Orthodox Ukrainians do not want to be under the jurisdiction of Kiev. Archbishop Job of Telmessos, Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches gives his own point of view on the…

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Source: The New York Times By Neil MacFarquhar MOSCOW — Vyacheslav Gorshkov, who teaches the catechism at a Kiev cathedral, was among the majority of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine who had reconciled themselves to the fact that their church answers to the Russian Orthodox patriarch in Moscow. No longer. Mr. Gorshkov does not want to break with the faith, but does want to split with the Russian Orthodox Church, incensed by what he sees as the Kremlin using the church as an instrument of its old imperial control. He is among the majority of the faithful hoping that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew…

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Source: Hurriyet Daily News WASHINGTON The United States said in a statement on Sept. 25 that it supports Fener Greek OrthodoxPatriarch Dimitri Bartholomew’s stance on granting independence to the Ukrainian Church. U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement that the U.S. supports the freedom of groups “to govern their religion according to their beliefs and practice their faiths freely without government interference.” “The United States respects the ability of Ukraine’s Orthodox religious leaders and followers to pursue autocephaly according to their beliefs. We respect the Ecumenical Patriarch [Dimitri Bartholomew] as a voice of religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue,” she added. Nauert reiterated her country’s “unwavering…

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