Eastern Christianity

Roman Orthodox Christians look forward to the second coming but they also have another reason to rejoice – their annual calendar. It’s an annual event that features muscular male models – many of them priests – in devout positions.

A Syriac church dating back to the 4th century in Turkey?s southeastern province of Mardin, has been put for sale on a real estate website for 12.5 million Turkish Liras, while the institutions responsible ancient sites have remained mum on the situation.

Bulgaria marks on Saturday the 1150th anniversary of its conversion to Christianity and the 1145th anniversary of the establishment of an autocephalous Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church also observes on Saturday the feast day of Saint Tsar Boris I the Baptiser, the medieval ruler, who converted Bulgaria to Christianity.

Hollywood actor Jonathan Jackson, well-known from his stint on the American soap opera General Hospital and a current protagonist on the TV series Nashville, visited the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos last week with his 12-year-old son Caleb.

Jackson, who was baptized in the Orthodox Christian faith in 2012, met with Vatopedi Abbot Efraim over the weekend.

Faith in the Resurrection is source of light and spiritual strength to tell the truth to the world, the Romanian Orthodox Church (BOR) Patriarch Daniel says in his Holy Easter Pastoral.

Photo credit: (c) Silviu MATEI / AGERPRES PHOTO

The first Sunday of Great Lent was declared a feast of Orthodoxy in 843 to celebrate the triumph of the orthodox view over iconoclasm, the heresy that icons should not be venerated, and over all heresies.

Photo credit (c): ANGELO BREZOIANU / AGERPRES FILES

The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has proposed a better promotion of the country's sacred sites to tourists and their inclusion in pilgrimage routes.

These issues were raised during the meeting of representatives of the Holy Synod, including Bulgaria's Patriarch Neofit, and Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova, daily Dnevnik reports.

In an interview with a Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, Archbishop Stanislav Hocevar of Belgrade said the reconciliation process was moving ahead more slowly than he would like.

"Nobody is quite prepared to work toward a new reconciliation," the Archbishop said.

BELGRADE - Patriarch Irinej of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) delivered a Christmas epistle calling on the Orthodox believers to pray for peace, love and unity to reign the world this year.

BELGRADE - Metropolitan Ilarion Alfeyev, the second most senior official of the Russian Orthodox Church, has said that Moscow wants to mediate in the church dispute between Belgrade and Skopje, the Religious Information Agency (VIA) reported on Monday.