Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

A monk died and two firemen were injured when their vehicles fell off a 70-meter cliff near the chapel of the Hilandari Monastery in Mount Athos on Thursday.

According to initial reports, the two firemen were injured after their vehicle veered off course in an inaccessible area during a morning patrol.

A coast guard vessel on Wednesday recovered the body of a monk who had been missing since Tuesday night off the coast of Dafni, a small settlement on Mount Athos.

The monk went missing after the boat he had been in with two fellow monks capsized on Tuesday.

The other two monks were rescued by passing boats shortly after the vessel capsized.

By Alexis Papachelas

Mount Athos is truly a magical mountain, not in the Thomas Mann sense of the term but rather as a blessed, holy place that speaks volumes to Greeks.

Premier Victor Ponta attends today at the 'St. George the New' Church in downtown Bucharest the religious commemorative ceremony marking 300 years since the martyr death of Prince Constantin Brancoveanu (1654 - 1714) and his four sons.

Leftist opposition leader Alexis Tsipras was expected to visit to visit Mount Athos in northern Greece on Thursday and Friday at the invitation of the monastic community, according to reports.

Reports said Tsipras would be accompanied by MPs Ioannis Amanatidis and Makis Lykopoulos, both responsible for religious affairs, and Nikos Pappas, the head of SYRIZA's political office.

Police in northern Greece have arrested a 35-year-old Latvian national in connection with a large fire that burned for five days near the monastic community of Mount Athos in the summer of 2012, it was reported on Tuesday.

A Greek Orthodox monk pours oil into the lamps at the tomb of Jesus at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday, two days ahead of a the top-level visit by Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios and Pope Francis to the Holy Land.