The annual Great Blessing of the Waters service again took place in Sydney, Australia this month, with the Archbishop of Australia, His Eminence Makarios, officiating at the coastal Yarra Bay site, on the occasion of the Epiphany. The ceremony marked the 28th consecutive Great Blessing of the Waters in Sydney, with congregants from all…

  The election of a new president in Croatia has raised hopes that better days will dawn for the minority Serbian Orthodox minority in the one-time Yugoslav republic. At the same time, in another former Yugoslav republic, the small Adriatic country of Montenegro, the Orthodox Church there continues to strongly oppose a new law mandating…

The Patriarch of All Romania, His Beatitude Daniel, on Sunday met at the Patriarchal residence in Bucharest with members of a national council of the Union of Romanian Orthodox Students. The Patriarch congratulated members of the group for their prolific and dynamic activity, while also citing some of the commemorative events that will take place…

The Orthodox Academy of Crete will be awarded a special distinction by the Athens-based Athanassios Botsis Journalism Promotion Foundation. The foundation announced that the Academy is being honored for its half-century of work in the defense of universal human rights. The distinction will be awarded during the Botsis Foundation’s 36th annual awards ceremony, in the…

The Honorable Donald J. Trump President of the United States of America 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, It is a privilege to greet you at Christmastide on behalf of the Bishops in the United States of America, members of the Episcopal Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North, Central…

  A top cadre of the main opposition party in Greece, leftist SYRIZA, last week expressed sharp opposition over the current center-right government’s intent to allocate a two-million-euro grant to the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School Of Theology in the Boston area. The school is the main seminary for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America….

The 37th Annual Father Alexander Schmemann Lecture, slated to be held on the campus of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary [SVOTS] on Thursday, January 30, 2020, will commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The event is one of many being planned by the Orthodox Church in America…

A draft bill was tabled in Greece Parliament over the weekend, as widely expected, removing the religious affiliation and citizenship fields from high school diplomas and other certificates bestowed by public schools in the country. The draft bill will be up for a vote in the coming days. The citizenship entry will also be scrapped…

NEW YORK – The Archons of the Order of St. Andrew held an inaugural meeting of the St. Andrew Ecumenical Patriarchal Fund, a new initiative to enhance and contribute to the financial independence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in its worldwide mission and ministries. The meeting was held in the Conference Room of the…