Today the Bulgarian Orthodox church celebrates the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by Saint Anna, who is patron saint of all things feminine, of marriage, family and motherhood. In folklore, besides motherhood, this day is also associated with the turning of the Sun to the East towards spring, and the increase of the length…

The new leader of the Turkish Cypriot community on the divided island republic this week continued his verbal provocations, taking his cue from Ankara, which illegally occupies one-third of Cyprus. Ersin Tatar told media in the occupied areas of Cyprus that “…Varosha is ours”, a reference to a coastal ghost town abandoned since August 1974….

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, this week received the new German ambassador to Turkey, Jürgen Schulz, at the Patriarchate’s Phanar-district seat.

A ceremony dedicating the Cathedral of St. Nicholas in the Ibrahimiyyah district of Alexandria has been cancelled. The ceremony was set for Friday, but was postponed due to the sudden repose of the Alexandria Patriarchate’s Metropolitan of Pelusium, Nifon.   

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church was convened online on Tuesday, chaired by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, His Holiness Kirill. In an address to the attending hierarchs, His Holiness warned of a risk of a third wave of the pandemic, as well as the need to strictly apply all of…

The first part of an online Synaxis, or assembly, with the Elder Archimandrite Ephraim, the Abbot of the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi, with Orthodox theology students in the United States, has been posted today on the pages of the online magazine Pemptousia. The assembly was held on November 13 last month. 

The second annual international conference on religious diplomacy, entitled “Religions and Challenges for the New Decade”, commenced on Wednesday, with this year’s conference, however, being conducted online due to the coronavirus pandemic. On the occasion of the conference, the president of the Athens-based Institute for Foreign Relations, Loukas Katsonos, spoke with the Orthodoxia News Agency…

The Church today commemorates the Conception, by St. Anna, of the Most Holy Theotokos, the Virgin Mary.

The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, His Beatitude Ieronymos, spoke by phone on Tuesday evening with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, with the object of discussions focusing directly on how upcoming Christmas services will be celebrated by the Church of Greece. Currently, and up until Dec. 14, services in all places of worship in…