Category: Global Orthodoxy
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May 1964: A Radical Change in the History of the Russian Church Abroad
The 1964 Council of the Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR) marked a new milestone in its history: on May 27, 1964 Metropolitan Anastasii (Gribanovskii) retired. Bishop Anastasii’s episcopal consecration took place in Moscow in 1906. In 1913 he was appointed to devise rites for the glorification of St. Patriarch Germogen, which was presided…
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St. Innocent’s first homily as Metropolitan of Moscow
After the death of St. Philaret Drozdov, St. Innocent, the former missionary to Alaska and Siberia, was chosen to be his replacement as Metropolitan of Moscow. Below is his first pastoral address as Metropolitan, given in Moscow’s Dormition (Assumption) Cathedral on May 26, 1868 — 142 years ago today. The address was printed in the…
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Churches on wheels: then and now
On April 27, MSNBC published photos of a medical train in Russia that includes a full-blown Orthodox chapel (thanks to the excellent Byzantine, TX blog for the link). The train/clinic, named after the great surgeon-bishop St. Luke of Simferopol, travels to the far reaches of Siberia and has “a carriage that operates as a mobile…
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A Connecticut Yankee in the Tsarina’s Domain
It may come as a surprise to learn that one of the earliest descriptions of Orthodox worship in Alaska comes not from the pen of a Russian missionary or fur trader, but from that of a young Anglo-American explorer who visited the “Great Land” in 1778, sixteen years before the first missionaries arrived in Kodiak.…
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An interview with Patriarch Tikhon in 1923
Editor’s note: The interview that follows originally appeared in a book published by the YMCA in Prague. I found it on the fascinating Alexander Palace Time Machine website (the original is here). Many thanks to Jenny Mosher, who posted a link to this interview on our SOCHA Facebook page. Bob Atchison, editor of the…
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Chambésy proposes Episcopal Assemblies in the 1990s
Fresh from the historic first Episcopal Assembly of North and Central America, it is helpful to remember that the proposal for the regional Assemblies which came out of the Chambésy, Switzerland meetings of the mother churches did not originate only recently. Many have seen this week’s meeting as in some sense a continuation of the…
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The death of Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople, 1821
Today is both the Feast of the Annunciation (on the New Calendar), and Greek Independence Day. With that in mind, I decided to look in my archives for American accounts of the Greek War of Independence, in 1821. I have quite a few reports from various newspapers and journals, and the single event that received…