Source: Interfax Moscow, May 12, Interfax – President of the Cuban Council of State and Council of Ministers, Raul Castro, has invited Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia to visit the republic. “It is a great pleasure for me to meet with you again. We always recall with pleasure your first visit to Cuba and we hope it will not be the last one,” the Cuban leader said at a meeting with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Patriarchal Chambers in Moscow. Patriarch Kirill has already been to Cuba, but that was before he became Patriarch,…
Browsing: Russian Orthodox Church
Source: Vestnik Kavkaza Not long ago, Pope Francis called on Catholics to participate in politics, calling it “one of the highest forms of love, as its aim is taking care of the global welfare.” According to katolik.ru, the Pope also stressed that participation in politics was a kind of martyrdom, as it demanded faithfulness to the ideal of the global welfare and bearing a heavy cross of disappointments and sins. “Can a Catholic be involved in politics? Of course, he should do it. Should a Catholic interfere in politics? He should do it!” the Pope believes. The Russian Orthodox Church…
Source: Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs by NICOLAI N. PETRO Note from Nicolai N. Petro1 Abstract For many analysts the term Russky mir, or Russian World, epitomizes an expansionist and messianic Russian foreign policy, the perverse intersection of the interests of the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church. Little noted is that the term actually means something quite different for each party. For the state it is a tool for expanding Russia’s cultural and political influence, while for the Russian Orthodox Church it is a spiritual concept, a reminder that through the baptism of Rus, God consecrated these…
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: Russian Orthodox Church Department for External Church Relations Lecture by the Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, at the Universities of Winchester (5 February 2015) and Cambridge (6 February 2015). Dear members of the faculty, students and guests of the university! I have been asked to give a lecture on the topic of interaction between Christians today. Does ecumenism have a future? This question has become ever more relevant and demands an all-round analysis. When Jesus Christ founded his Church on earth, it was a single community of disciples…
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: Ecumenical News by Miko Morelos and Peter Kenny The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has castigated the Greek-Catholic Church in Ukraine for being “divisive,” saying its stance puts at risk the improving of relations between Rome and Moscow. Patriarch Kirill at the same time singled out the Vatican for what he said is a measured tone in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. He pointed out that the Holy See had maintained its position on the resumption of peace talks instead of making “any lopsided assessments.” “Today, fresh conflicts in Ukraine in light of the latest political events in the country…
Source: Serbian Orthodox Church On the desecration of Russian and Serbian graves at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney An unknown vandal or vandals during the night between Tuesday (09/12/2014) and Wednesday (10/12/2014) desecrated seventy six (76) graves in the Russian and Serbian Section No. 1 at Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery. We are amazed and saddened by this act of vandalism witnessed in the desecration of graves. Graves and cemeteries have always been, in all cultures and cultured societies, considered sacred places and, as such, were respected and spared even from enemy armies during times of war. We believe that such vileness belongs…
Source: Toronto Star A church spokesman told Moscow radio a project to place the Lord of the Rings’ flaming eye atop a skyscraper would symbolize the “triumph of evil … rising up over the city.” By: Dan Peleschuk Globalpost MOSCOW— Russian fans of the writer J. R. R. Tolkien were disappointed Wednesday after a local art group abandoned plans to install a flaming eye from his The Lord of the Rings series atop a Moscow skyscraper. The group, Svechenie, said it would not re-create the evil Eye of Sauron, after the Russian Orthodox Church complained the installation would invite mysterious…
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: The National by Alan Philps When Pope Francis gave his first speech to the European Parliament on Tuesday, the members were aware that he was not going to restrict himself to praise in the manner of John Paul II, who had called the European Union a “beacon of civilisation”. But still many were surprised at his harsh tone. The EU had lost its way and replaced its ideals with “bureaucratic technicalities”. Europe was a haggard old grandmother, no longer “fertile and vibrant”, and had allowed a generation of young people to fester in unemployment. Returning to a favourite theme, he…
Source: NBC News An Orthodox priest rings a set of bells after baptizing a baby on board a train carriage that operates as a mobile church, bringing religion to remote parts of Russia. The Doctor Voino-Yasenetsky Saint Luka train travels annually to distant settlements in the Krasnoyarsk and Khakassia regions of Siberia. Alongside the mobile church, the train also transports medical personnel and equipment, offering free consultations to about 200 patients a day in places where hospitals and clinics are scarce. First published May 28, 2014. [subscribe2]