Eastern Christianity

It had been a long time since I last spent the Orthodox Easter in the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the old neighborhood of Phanar.

The Holy Fire arrived at the Athens International Airport at 19.30 and was received with honours of a state leader during a special ceremony. The Holy Fire was lit earlier in Jerusalem where the an official  Greek governmental delegation received it and boarded on the Prime Ministerial airplane and flown back to Athens.

A Thessaloniki appeals court has suspended a decision calling for the immediate arrest of the rebel abbot of Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos, northern Greece, pending his appeal.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced a three-month state of emergency following twin church bombings by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that killed at least 44 people on Palm Sunday, April 9, the deadliest attacks on the minority in recent memory.

UPD:

An Athens criminal court on Tuesday acquitted all 14 defendants charged in connection with a contentious property swap between the Vatopedi Monastery in the monastic community of Mount Athos in northern Greece and the Greek state.

An Athens criminal court on Tuesday acquitted all 14 defendants charged in connection with a property swap between the Vatopedi Monastery in the Mount Athos monastic community in northern Greece and the Greek state.

A right-wing NGO and an obscure Orthodox church group have been accused of deliberately provoking the country's Serbian community as it gets ready to mark Orthodox Christmas Eve.

The patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), Irinej, on Tuesday sent his Christmas message urging believers to live in mutual "brotherly" love.

Serbia's majority Eastern Orthodox Christians will celebrate Christmas according to the Julian calendar, on Saturday, January 7.

Archbishop Ieronymos has launched a fresh attack on the left-led government, accusing it of trying to undermine the role of Orthodox faith in the predominantly Christian nation.

"You may have sold out Greece's treasures, our trains, our ports; however we will not hand over to you our homeland and our Orthodox faith," Archbishop said in Livadia, north of Attica, Tuesday.