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On February 4, 2020, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church of Ukraine) met at the Congregational Hall of the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy presided over by His Beatitude Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine. All members of the Synod except Patriarch Emeritus Filaret, who was absent for no good reason, attended the meeting, according to the official website of the OCU. After considering the present activities of the Honorable Patriarch Filaret and taking…

On 13th February 2020, at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, met with Pope Francis. The DECR chairman conveyed to the Pope of Rome greetings from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. Pope Francis also conveyed his warm brotherly regards to the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Discussed at the meeting held in the atmosphere of mutual understanding and…

Hierarchs of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia and of the Serbian Church came together this weekend to liturgically celebrate the glorification among the saints of several New Martyrs of the Czech-Slovak Church. As OrthoChristian previously reported, Frs. Vladimír Petřek and Václav Čikl, as well as Ján Sonnevend, Václav Ornest, and Karel Louda and their families, who were companions of the highly-venerated Hieromartyr St. Gorazd (Pavlik), were canonized by the Holy Synod of the Czech-…

His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, supports the recent statements from President Vladimir Putin in favor of the traditional understanding of the family as the union of a man and a woman. “As for ‘parent # 1’ and ‘parent # 2, I have already said publicly once before, and I will repeat again: as long as I am President, we will not have parents one and two—we will have a father and mother,” the Presiden…

The Ukrainian government has no plans to seize the world-famous Kiev Caves and Pochaev Lavras from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and transfer them to the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” says Minister of Culture, Youth, and Sports Vladimir Borodyansky.  Both sites have been state-owned since soviet times and are leased to the use of the UOC. If there are no violations of the law, then there are no legal grounds for revising the existing contracts, the Minister said in an interview with rbc.ua…

Despite the financial crisis, the Albanian Orthodox Church spares no expense in restoring its churches that have been in ruins since the persecution of the faith under the communist government last century. According to a report from the Albanian Church, 63 churches and monasteries were fully restored between 1991 and 2019, in addition to the dozens of new churches that were constructed, not always under easy conditions, and at a price tag of $10.8 million (10 million euros), according to a rep…

Das Oberhaupt der Orthodoxen Kirche der Ukraine (OKU) hofft, dass im laufenden Jahr weitere orthodoxe Kirchen die OKU anerkennen werden. Anlässlich des ersten Jahrestags seiner Inthronisation am 3. Februar schrieb Metropolit Epifanij (Dumenko) von Kiew auf Facebook, das letzte Jahr sei „nicht einfach und voller verschiedener Herausforderungen“ gewesen. Doch „dank ihrer Einheit“ hätten das Patriarchat von Konstantinopel, das Patriarchat von Alexandria und die Orthodoxe Kirche von Griechenland di…

Der prominente russisch-orthodoxe Erzpriester Vsevolod Tschaplin ist am 26. Januar unerwartet im 52. Lebensjahr an den Folgen eines Herzinfarkts verstorben. Tschaplin war von 2001 bis 2009 stellv. Leiter des Außenamts des Moskauer Patriarchats, das in diesen Jahren vom künftigen Patriarchen, Metropolit Kirill (Gundjaev), geleitet wurde. Von 2009 bis zu seiner überraschenden Entlassung im Jahr 2015 wirkte er als Vorsitzender der Synodalabteilung für die Beziehungen zwischen Kirche und Gesellsch…

Das Erzbistum der Gemeinden russischer Tradition in Westeuropa hat zwei Auxiliarbischöfe gewählt. Archimandrit Syméon (Cossec), Vorsteher des Klosters Saint Silouane in Saint-Mars-de-Locquenay, und Igumen Elisée (Germain), der Rektor der Gemeinde de la Sainte Trinité (Krypta der Kathedrale des Hl. Alexander Nevski in Paris), wurden am 24. Januar 2020 an der der ersten ordentlichen Generalversammlung des vormaligen Pariser Exarchats seit seiner Vereinigung mit dem Moskauer Patriarchat einstimmig…