On Saturday, 31 December 2022, New Year’s Eve, the cutting of the annual Vasilopita of the Great Community of Stavrodromi took place in the hall of The Holy Trinity soup kitchen. The Vasilopita was blessed and cut by the Hierarchical Proistamenos, His Eminence Metropolitan Andreas of Saranta Ekklisies. The traditional coin, ‘flouri’ was found by…

His Eminence Archbishop Evgenios of Crete, a few hours before the end of 2022, announced the name of the new Protosyncellus of the Holy Archdiocese of Crete, in the Metropolitan Church of Saint Menas. After the election of His Grace Bishop Methodios Vernidakis to the office of the Bishop of Knossos, the current Abbot of…

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in his customary speech, in the Throne Room of the Patriarchal House, after the Divine Liturgy for the feast of the Circumcision of the Lord and the memory of Saint Basil the Great, during which he officiated on New Year’s morning at the Venerable Patriarchal Church at the Phanar, referred…

Archiepiscopal Encyclical on the New Year January 1, 2023 Unto the Most Reverend and Right Reverend Hierarchs, Pious Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, Presidents and Members of Parish Councils, Honorable Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Members of Leadership 100, the Day and Afternoon Schools, Philoptochos Societies, the Youth, Greek Orthodox Organizations, and the…

The splendid ecclesiastical calendar of the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi for 2023 is now available. The 2023 Vatopedi calendar showcases the ecclesiastical frescoes found in the catholicos, or main cathedral, of the venerable Mount Athos monastery. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, has welcomed the edition, while the foreword is…

The Serbian Patriarchate’s historic Visoki Decani monastery in Kosovo and Metohija this week referred to insolence on the part of the Kosovo Albanian administration in the province towards the Patriarch of Serbia, His Holiness Porfirije. In an announcement, the administration of the monastery also decried the “loud silence”, as it emphatically stated, of international representatives…

Members of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod, under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, this week issued a decision by which the Moscow Patriarchate considers a recent decision by the Alexandria Patriarchate to defrock the Metropolitan of Klin Leonid as “uncanonical”. The latter hierarch has been appointed as Exarch of Africa by the…

An increasingly belligerent and bellicose Erdogan regime in Turkey again threatened Greece this week if the latter exercises its international legal rights regarding an extension of territorial waters. This time around it was Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu who again threatened with aggression in case Athens extends territorial waters around the large island of Crete….

The Church today venerates the memory of Venerable Theodora of Caesarea. Today is also the feast day of Anysia, the Virgin-martyr of Thessaloniki.