The Patriarchate of Romania this week expressed its deep displeasure with a theatrical performance in the country that insults and denigrates religious symbols. In an announcement, the Patriarchate of Bucharest said the performance’s main intent is to insult religious symbols in the country, with the message intentionally blasphemous.    

  A tour of the Monastery of St. Ioannis Prodromos (Greek for St. John the Baptist) on the Ionian island of Lefkada, is posted today on the webpages of the Orthodoxia news agency. The Monastery, near the Livadi Karyas site on the island, is experiencing a renaissance, with new monks arriving to re-establish its former…

A theft of offerings from the main cathedral (Catholicos) at the historic Monastery of Iviron, on the semi-autonomous monastic community of Mt. Athos, was reported overnight on Thursday, with subsequent reports noting that five suspects subsequently abandoned the items in a forest near the Monastery and fled to a nearby gorge. A large police detail…

In a letter dated May 17, His Eminence Metropolitan Daniil of Vidin of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church addressed himself to the metropolitans of the Greek Orthodox Church and other Local Churches concerning the ongoing Ukrainian Church crisis, urging them not to support the actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople there. The Greek Church is among those…

On 12th June 2019, Russia Day, Hegumen Arseniy (Sokolov), representative of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia to the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, visited Russia’s Hmeimim airbase located in Latakia province, Syria. To mark this Russian national holiday, a military parade was held on the aerodrome. After the parade, Hegumen Arseniy…

On June 10, 2019, Bishop Arsenije of Nis, Serbian Orthodox Church, who is on a pilgrim trip to holy places of the Russian Orthodox Church, visited the St. Daniel Patriarchal Monastery and the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, in which he was received by Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. Present at the…

On June 10, 2019, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations (DECR), received the Russian Federation Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary A. A. Botsan-Kharchenko, who is preparing to leave for his new duty station in Belgrade. They were joined in their talk by A. Khoshev, DECR secretariat for inter-Orthodox…

On June 8, 2019, Metropolitan Pavel of Minsk and Zaslavsk, Patriarchal Exarch for All Belarus, met with the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II. The head of the Armenian Apostolic Church received Metropolitan Pavel, who is on a visit to Armenia with a blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and…

Speaking to Archbishop Ieronymos and Phanar hierarchs, Epiphany said that his visit to Istanbul had not been announced in advance. Speaking at Phanar on June 10, the head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko said in his welcoming speech in honor of Patriarch Bartholomew that his visit to Istanbul to celebrate the namesday of the head…