Free Republic

While the cause of the blaze has yet to be confirmed, St. Mary’s Romanian Orthodox Church in Alberta is one of over 100 churches to have burned down or been vandalized in Canada in recent years.BOIAN, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) –– A historic 118-year-old Romanian Orthodox Church was reduced to a pile of rubble after being consumed by a fire earlier this week, in an incident that police have yet to confirm the cause. St. Mary’s Romanian Orthodox Church, located in northwest Alberta near the Romanian settlement of Boian, was consecrated in 1905. It was declared a provincial historic resource in 1976....

On a recent sunny day in May, Russian Orthodox priest Timothy Kolb unlocked a padlock securing the door to Anchorage’s oldest standing building and stepped inside. The small, rough-hewn building looks like a log cabin and is easy to overlook next to the taller, brighter, onion-domed new St. Nicholas Church. The old St. Nicholas Church has been in disrepair for years, and a $350,000 federal grant, awarded in 2022 under the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund, is intended to tackle many of the big issues, including a dangerously leaning bell tower and the construction of a new foundation. Inside...

MOSCOW. May 30 (Interfax) - A bill banning sex changes has been submitted to the lower house of the Russian parliament, State Duma Deputy Chairman Petr Tolstoy said. "Medical workers are banned from performing medical interventions aimed at changing a person's sex, including the formation of the primary and/or secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex," the draft bill published on Tolstoy's Telegram account on Tuesday says. "Medical interventions as part of the treatment of congenital physiological anomalies in sex formation in children are allowed upon a decision made by a medical commission of a federal state health care provider,"...

More than 100,000 Orthodox faithful came out for the annual procession on the feast of the Ascension in Belgrade yesterday. According to the Serbian Orthodox Church, this is the largest procession in the history of the capital city. The feast of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated as the patronal feast of the city of Belgrade, and this year the celebration was augmented with the relics of St. Nikolai (Velimirović), the great 20th-century theologian and Holy Hierarch, which were brought from Lelić, 60 miles southwest of Belgrade, especially for the occasion. This year’s procession, led by His Holiness Patriarch...

MOSCOW. May 24 (Interfax) - The Bishops' Council of the noncanonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine has approved a transition to the Revised Julian calendar starting September 1, 2023. "A decision has been made. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine approved an important reform at a Bishops' Council meeting on May 24, 2023: the transition to the Revised Julian church calendar shall occur on September 1, 2023," Ukrainian media quoted a social media post by Bishop Varsonofy of Uzhgorod and Zakarpattia. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine will now celebrate Christmas on December 25 instead of January 7, the Intercession of the Theotokos...

Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America hopes to implement the jurisdiction-wide practice of girls serving in the altar and being tonsured as readers. This would include not just young children, but even students of the Archdiocese’s Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, according to a resolution submitted to the Metropolis of New Jersey’s Clergy-Laity Assembly yesterday. The resolutions, which are intended to be passed on to the Archdiocesan Clergy-Laity Congress, read: Resolved: That the Metropolis of New Jersey Local Assembly convey to the Archdiocesan Clergy-Laity Congress the request to develop the role...

MOSUL — On Sunday, the sound of the bells ringing at Mar Touma Church in Mosul, Iraq, marked a significant milestone in the city’s recovery from the devastation caused by the Islamic State (ISIS). Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Mar Benedict Younan Hanno presided over the Divine Liturgy for the inauguration of the rebuilt church, assisted by Father Yasser Atallah and Father Mazen Mutoka. Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul and Kerkeslokh (Kirkuk) Mar Nicodemus Daoud Matta Sharaf, Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul and Akre Michael Naguib, Chaldean Archbishop of the Diocese of Mosul and Akre, and French Consul General in Nineveh...

Ukraine’s Orthodox Church split from its Russian counterpart in 2018. We explain why.In October 2018, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially split from its Russian counterpart, after more than 300 years. The decision, which was approved by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the symbolic “first among equals” of the world’s Orthodox churches, triggered a major fallout within the Orthodox world, possibly the most serious in 1,000 years. The same month the declaration was made, the Russian Orthodox Church announced that it would break off relations with the Patriarchate. The process was ratified in a ceremony in Istanbul on Orthodox Christmas Eve, 2019,...

Christians in Sudan are appealing for prayer amid fears that Islamist extremists may exploit the growing conflict and instability in the country. According to Open Doors, the country's two million Christians fear Islamist extremists could use the current chaos to bring about a devastating return to harsh Sharia law. Fikiru Mehari, an Open Doors researcher for the East Africa region, has warned that the collapse of the country will cause "untold suffering" for the people of Sudan. The warning comes as hundreds of foreign diplomats from the US, UK and other countries were evacuated on Sunday following a week of...

Rome Newsroom, Apr 21, 2023 / 09:25 am The head of the Coptic Church is scheduled to offer the Orthodox Divine Liturgy in the Catholic Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome on May 14. According to Father Martin Browne, an official at the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, this liturgy will take place in the context of an official visit of Coptic Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria to the Vatican and “has been arranged following appropriate consultation.” In comments to the National Catholic Register on April 21, Browne drew a distinction between the Orthodox liturgy scheduled for May...

Patriarch Kirill commends and thanks the volunteers for their selfless service.The Common Cause Project is a collection of volunteers who are dedicated to preserving the Russian spiritual tradition in the North of Russia by means of restoring and renovating wooden churches in Russia’s North, many of which have fallen into disrepair or ruin due to decades of enforced neglect or outright attack under communism. Since 2006, however, stalwart volunteers each year trek into the inaccessible North in order to restore and save these spiritual treasures from destruction. Often when they are finished with the renovations, they turn the temples over...

There is a strange moment described in the gospels regarding the resurrection of Christ (in fact, there are several such moments). When Mary Magdalen first encounters the risen Lord, we are told that she “took Him for the gardener.” But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord,...

Russian President defies reports of counter offensives to personally deliver Easter greetings to the troops. In the second time in as many months, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the newly annexed areas of Kherson and Lugansk, having visited Mariupol last month. He traveled by helicopter in spite of threats of a spring counter offensive by Ukrainian forces to receive personally progress reports from the military authorities in the regions, demonstrating that Russia is in control of these regions and no threat is serious enough to prevent him visiting at will. After receiving progress reports, the President congratulated...

Teacher's oath will increase the teacher's authority in society.Influential philosopher and religious theorist Alexander Shchipkov has proposed teachers take an oath, similar to the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians, and oaths taken by members of the military and the priesthood. Shchipkov is rector of the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian, and deputy head of the World Russian People’s Council, among other roles. He explained that in some professions, it is not enough merely to get a degree to join them. He pointed out specifically doctors, soldiers, and priests, which, he claimed are subject to “ethical obligations.” As...

KHARTOUM — While excavating an archaeological site in the Old Dongola region of northern Sudan, Polish researchers discovered stone artifacts dating back to the Middle Ages including ancient murals inscribed with drawings and pictorial motifs of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the archangel Michael. The researchers described the discovery as unique and unexpected because the images were painted in an unusual way compared to other Christian archaeological discoveries in northern Sudan. The Polish archeologists said the unique archaeological discovery has great artistic and historical significance for the Old Dongola region. They explained the murals have retained their natural colors and...

The Church is the Cross through history. St. Paul wrote that he had determined to restrict his preaching to the Cross. (1 Cor. 2:2) This was not an effort to diminish the gospel. Rather, it was an effort to rightly understand the gospel. One of the great temptations of Christianity is to allow itself to become a “religion,” that is, to serve whatever role that religions of any sort play within a culture and the life of an individual. Despite every atheist protestation, religion abides – and if there is not one that is inherited, then a culture will invent...

One of the more enigmatic figures from early Christian history is Saint Veronica—the woman known to Catholics from the Sixth Station of the Cross, who is said to have wiped the face of Jesus while He carried His cross on the road to Calvary. There is a memorable and beautifully presented sequence of scenes featuring Veronica in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. But nowhere is the woman or the incident described mentioned in Sacred Scripture. To learn about Veronica, we must turn to extra-biblical sources. The first mention of a woman named Veronica associated with Our Lord may be...

I saw a commercical recently that proclaimed, “Freedom has no limits!” It sought to capture the modern imagination with what is a patently absurd statement. Everything in creation has limits – that is the nature of created things. It is nonetheless the case that we can imagine our life without limits – a shameless existence where nothing impedes our pleasure. This was the inner world of a young woman in Alexandria who would later be known as St. Mary of Egypt. She left home, according to her own testimony, and took up a life of unbridled pleasure: sex, alcohol, whatever...

Patriarchal representative also calls for abortion inducing drugs to be banned.The Patriarchal Commission on Family, Motherhood and Childhood Protection of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) proposes to introduce criminal penalties for inducing or forcing a woman to perform an abortion in clinics. Priest Fyodor Lukyanov, representing the Church, addressed a crowd of pediatricians at a recent medical forum. "It is necessary to provide for punishment for inducing abortion,” he said. He also promoted toughening the law against non-doctors inducing an abortion by increasing the maximum amount of fines from the current 80 thousand rubles to 150 thousand rubles, and the...

The common Russian people, not just elites, are organizing against corrupt Western values.The conservative, pro-family, and pro-Orthodox movement “Sorok Sorokov” is founding a pro-family political party called simply, “Za Cemyu” or, For the Family. The first party congress is meant to be held on the 25th of March in Moscow in the conference hall of the Pokrovskaya Hotel of the Holy Intercession Monastery. The party, whose platform in Russian can be found here and its Telegram channel here, advocates for a revived Russia where traditional culture will be supported and instilled by the State. Abortion would be banned outright, and...