Eastern Orthodox Church

The American School of Classical Studies in Athens announced that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople will receive the Gennadius Award for the year 2025, recognizing its enduring contribution to Greek learning and Hellenism.

The award will be presented during the School’s annual gala, to be held on Thursday, May 8, 2025, at Gotham Hall in New York City.

Greece's Orthodox bishops have called for the "peaceful and constructive coexistence of Christians and Muslims" in Syria to be maintained, saying that any "uprooting Orthodox Christianity from Syria" would be "sacrilegious in the eyes of history."

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, based in Istanbul, has once again proposed the idea of celebrating Easter on the same day for both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

Pope Francis said on Thursday that he hopes to travel to Turkey next year to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity's first ecumenical council.

The visit to Nicaea, today located in İznik on a lake southeast of Istanbul, would come during Francis' big Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Christianity.

Three-quarters of Bulgarians identify as Orthodox, but less than two-thirds express belief in God. This disparity between identifying as Orthodox and believing in God stems from the fact that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is viewed not only as a religious body but also as a historical institution intertwined with Bulgarian society and statehood, contributing to the national identity.

A live music event inside the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity in Brighton in southern England last Sunday has been met with the disapproval of the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain, which is an archdiocese of the Eastern Orthodox Church's Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Easter and its central message of the resurrection "serves as the motivation for the struggle against the presence of evil and its consequences in the world, acting as a powerful transformative force," Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has said in his Easter encyclical.

Bulgarian worshippers thronged Sofia's golden-domed Alexander Nevsky Cathedral on Friday to pay their last respects to Orthodox Christian Patriarch Neophyte, the first elected head of the church in the post-communist Balkan country, who died this week aged 78.

Patriarch Porfirije will serve the holy bishop's liturgy at the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Patriarchate of Pec.
Patriarch will serve the morning liturgy, starting at eight o'clock, Tanjug was told in the Serbian Orthodox Church.
In the Church of St. Sava in Belgrade, the celebration of Christmas will begin with the service of the midnight liturgy.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is moving to a new calendar with a decision of the Synod, Ukrinform reported, citing BBC Ukraine.

"The Orthodox Church of Ukraine - the most popular religious organization in the country, has approved the complete transition to the new calendar," an official announcement states.