Orthodox Christians

The Story of Mount Athos’ Panagia Portaitissa

June 9, 2013 Featured News

Stella Tsolakidou - 8/6/13 One of the most important relics of Mount Athos besides the icon of Axion Esti, is the Virgin Mary Portaitissa (meaning in Greek “Keeper of the Gate”) or the Iveron Theotokos as it is also known. Its history has made many people cry and others to believe, while it is considered one of [...]

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Visiting the ‘Holy Mountain’ Athos in Greece

June 1, 2013 Featured News

The Monastic Republic of Mount Athos 1/6/13 There’s an autonomous region in Greece that’s home to the “Holy Mountain.” It’s one of the holiest sites for Orthodox Christians. About 2,000 monks live there. But anyone can visit, as long as they’re male. Reporter Matthew Brunwasser spent four days in Mount Athos, among the monks and [...]

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Norwich Syrian Orthodox Christians celebrate St George

May 18, 2013 News

18/5/13 Norfolk members of one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world – the Syrian Orthodox Church – celebrated the feast St George, a major festival in their yearly calendar at the weekend (May 12). Mike Wiltshire reports. The congregation is one of an increasing number of vibrant ethnic churches in Norwich, despite the [...]

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At a Jerusalem parlor, centuries of pilgrim tattoos

May 16, 2013 Featured News
Wassim Razzouk tattoos an Ethiopian Christian Orthodox pilgrim in a hotel in Jerusalem, Monday, May 13, 2013. (photo credit: AP/Dusan Vranic)

    Wassim Razzouk tattoos an Ethiopian Christian Orthodox pilgrim in a hotel in Jerusalem. (photo credit: AP/Dusan Vranic)  DANIELA BERRETTA and IAN DEITCH 14/5/13 Orthodox Christians ink themselves with a permanent reminder of their visit with a family that has practiced the art form for generations. AP — Orthodox Christians visiting the Holy Land often return [...]

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The Politics of Human Rights: Orthodox Christianity Gets the Short End, by Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou

May 9, 2013 News

W ashington, D.C. 5/8/2013 Today is Easter for the world’s 350 million Orthodox Christians, who just completed their Holy Week of prayer and fasting  which culminated in today’s message of transcendent hope.  But all last week and today, Orthodox Christians the world over have been reminded that politics trumps human rights.  There’s a cruel irony [...]

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Are Turkey’s Orthodox Christians Waiting for Godot?

May 8, 2013 Featured News
Metropolitan Apostolos Daniilidis, an Orthodox bishop at the monastery attached to the Halki school, is seen at

  Orhan Kemal Cengiz for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse - 7/5/13 The memorable play of Irish author and playwright Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot,” has become a metaphor for situations in which people wait for someone unlikely to come, or do not even know what they are expecting. They just keep waiting and waiting. The handful of [...]

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Syria: Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter in tears

May 7, 2013 News

7/5/13 The Orthodox Churches in Syria celebrated Easter on Sunday – but the Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo said: ” while they sang ‘Christ is risen’, and while repeating those words of joy and victory – all their prayers mingled with their tears. ” Not only is the Christian community suffering grave shortages of [...]

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Nazarbayev attends Easter service in Uspensky Cathedral

May 6, 2013 Featured News

6/5/13 Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Uspensky Cathedral, Kazakhstan’s major orthodox church, on Easter Sunday, Tengrinews.kz reports. “Dear fellow-countrymen, the whole Orthodox world is celebrating the most important holiday, the Easter, today. The Easter symbolizes renewal and rebirth and is important to our country that is reviving and becoming a better place, a new country where people [...]

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Bartholomew leads Orthodox Easter celebration on Gokceada

May 6, 2013 Featured News

6/5/13 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I on Sunday joined the Orthodox celebration of Easter, one of the main holidays in the Christian world, for the first time on the island of Gökçeada (Imbros), where the patriarch was born and raised. Bartholomew, spiritual leader of about 300 million Orthodox Christians around the world, led the service at [...]

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Romanian nuns celebrate Easter among the skulls of their dead sisters as Orthodox Christians pack churches around the world

May 6, 2013 Featured News

By ROSIE TAYLOR - 5/5/13 Around 300million Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter Sunday  Nuns at the Pasarea monastery in Romania marked the holy event in room of skulls Thousands attended Holy Fire ceremony and Easter service at Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem As thousands of Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter Sunday today with services around the world, [...]

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President Ilham Aliyev congratulates Orthodox Christians in Azerbaijan

May 4, 2013 Featured News

4/5/13 Baku – APA. President Ilham Aliyev has congratulated Orthodox Christian community of Azerbaijan, APA reports. The message of congratulations says: “Dear compatriots! I congratulate you on the sacred Easter, extend my best wishes to you. Throughout the centuries mutual respect, confidence and fraternal relations have existed among different nations and religions in the Azerbaijani [...]

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Orthodox Easter celebrated Sunday

May 3, 2013 News

  Jeremy Sellew - 3/5/13 Orthodox Christians around the Mon Valley will be celebrating their holiest of holidays this weekend. Sunday marks the Easter holiday on the Julian calendar. “The Orthodox use the Julian calendar, while other religions use the Gregorian calendar,” said the Rev. Fred Pfeil, pastor of Monessen’s St. Michael Orthodox Church. “It is [...]

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Orthodox Christians mark Great Friday

May 3, 2013 Featured News

Today, May 3, the Orthodox Christians mark Great Friday – the most sorrowful day of the church calendar, when the suffering on the cross and earthly death of the Savior are commemorated. On this day of the Holy Week the fast is particularly severe: according to church canons, a believer is supposed to eat nothing [...]

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There are more Orthodox than Lutherans in Estonia

May 1, 2013 Featured News

1/5/13 There are more Orthodox Christians than representatives of other religions among residents of Estonia aged 15 and above. 16% of Estonia’s population call themselves Orthodox, reports Interfax Religion. According to the 2011 population and living space census, 10% of the Estonian population consider themselves Lutherans, reported the Department of Statistics on Monday. At the [...]

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Easter on May 5? Orthodox Christians celebrate in accordance to Julian calendar

May 1, 2013 Featured News

By Jill Clair Gentry / Baldwin People editorpeople@gulfcoastnewspapers.com 1/5/13 Most Christians around the world celebrated Easter March 31 this year, but Orthodox Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Christ May 5. Orthodox Easter traditions also differ from other branches of the church, and Father Paul Mayernick of St. Athanasios Orthodox Mission Church in Gulf Shores [...]

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Bulgarian Orthodox Christians Celebrate Palm Sunday

April 29, 2013 News

29/4/13 Bulgarian Orthodox Christians celebrate Palm Sunday – Tsventisa-Vrabnitsa, to mark the triumphal arrival of Christ into Jerusalem. The Bulgarian tradition is to carry flowers and willow branches, rather than palm leaves, and the day is also regarded as the holiday of the fields, meadows and forests. It is one of the most important holy [...]

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Easter on way for the Orthodox

April 16, 2013 News

By Andrew Estocin / Albuquerque resident – 15/4/13 Easter is a distant memory for most New Mexicans. Look down the aisle of your local store and one finds only a clearance bin of damaged Easter bunnies mixed in with threads of plastic green grass. Yellow marshmallow Peeps are an endangered species on the candy aisle. [...]

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Icons tied to salvation history

March 17, 2013 News

16/3/13 March 24 is the first Sunday of Great Lent for Orthodox Christians and is known as Orthodoxy Sunday. The theme of Orthodoxy Sunday is the “Triumph of Holy Icons.” Great Lent starts Monday. During the eighth century, the church was struggling with whether or not to keep or eliminate Holy Icons, the “pictures” of [...]

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”This Is Simply Our Home”

February 27, 2013 Featured News
Land dispute with the Turkish government and Kurdish village leaders: The Mor Gabrial is the oldest surviving Christian monastery in the world. There have been claims that the monastery was built on the grounds of a previous mosque - regardless of the fact that the monastery was founded over 170 tears prior to the birth of Mohammed

  Syriac Orthodox Christians in Turkey Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere – 27/2/13 In recent years, around 60-100 Syriac Orthodox families have returned from central Europe to Turkey. Encouraged by changes in the political atmosphere, the minority nonetheless faces a host of problems, from the expropriation of land belonging to a monastery, to a ban on special [...]

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Serbian House of Studies to be Founded at Seminary

February 16, 2013 Featured News

15/2/13 St. Vladimir’s Seminary (SVOTS) and the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at the University of Belgrade have made a formal agreement to work together with the aim of establishing a Serbian House of Studies on the campus of St. Vladimir’s Seminary. The House of Studies has several goals, including the promotion of sustained dialogue and [...]

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Orthodox Christians to join Friday’s March for Life

January 21, 2013 Featured News

21/1/13 – OCA On the eve of his Enthronement as Primate of the Orthodox Church in America the weekend of January 26-27, 2013, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, together with other members of the Holy Synod of Bishops, clergy, seminarians and faithful of all ages will once again gather in the US capital for the annual [...]

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Will the Roman Catholic Church apologize for the genocide of Serbian Orthodox Christians?

January 19, 2013 Featured News
Head of Serbian orthodox priest and CROAT Ustase soldier showing proudly his master peace!

Ivan Simic – 19/1/13 The recent decision by the Hague “International” Tribunal to acquit two Croat generals  for their roles in Operation Storm, despite the preponderance of evidence implicating them in the largest single act of ethnic cleansing in Europe since the end of WWII,  as well as the recent acquittal of Albanian Ramush Haradinaj for [...]

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Orthodox Christians mark Epiphany holiday – Photos

January 19, 2013 Featured News
A Belarus Orthodox believer plunges into icy waters as a priest blesses him on the eve of the Epiphany holiday in Pilnitsa some 30 km outside Minsk, on January 18, 2013. Thousands of believers jumpe into holes cut in ice, braving freezing temperatures, on January 18 and early on January 19 to mark Epiphany, when they take part in a baptism ceremony. VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images

A woman crosses herself while bathing in the ice cold water of the Moskva River, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, Jan. 18, 2013. Thousands of Russian Orthodox Church followers on Friday and Saturday will plunge into icy rivers and ponds across the country to mark the upcoming Epiphany, cleansing themselves with water deemed holy for the [...]

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Russian Church outraged by abuses of Orthodox Christians in Kosovo

January 16, 2013 Featured News

6/1/13 The Russian Orthodox Church has expressed outrage at the arrests and beatings of Orthodox believers in Kosovo during the Christmas holidays. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Moscow Patriarchate said that police must apologize to the head of the female monastery in Gracanica and to Bishop Teodosije for bursting into the monastery without [...]

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Religious leader congratulates Orthodox Christians of Azerbaijan

January 7, 2013 News

7/1/13 Caucasus Muslims Department chief Allahshukur Pashazade has congratulated the Archbishop of Baku and Azerbaijan, Alexander and the orthodox community of Azerbaijan on Christmas. “On behalf of Muslims and personally on my own behalf I congratulate you and all representatives of the orthodox community of Azerbaijan on Christmas. I share your happiness on occasion of [...]

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