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Was Alexandria Really Autocephalous in the 19th Century?
The Patriarchate of Alexandria was founded by the Apostle Mark, at a time when Alexandria was essentially the second city of the Roman Empire, after Rome itself. Largely because of this, in the earliest…
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Protopresbyter Pontius Rupyshev – a spiritual light from Vilnius
I serve in Vilnius Cathedral of the Dormition which is the historical cathedral of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania. Today it functions as a simple parish, our metropolitan lives and mostly serves the Divine…
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An Ecclesiastical Coup d’Etat & the Pan-Orthodox Council of 1973
Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus was also the first President of Cyprus, serving three terms between 1960 and his death in 1977. He survived four assassination attempts and a coup d’etat, and in the…
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A Tribute to Bishop Basil of Wichita
Bishop Basil Essey, the longtime Antiochian Bishop of Wichita and Mid-America, is preparing to retire at the end of this year. Many Antiochians learned of this for the first time over the weekend, when…
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The End of the “Greek Captivity” of Antioch
For most of the 18th and 19th century, the Patriarchate of Antioch was controlled by ethnic Greeks rather than the local Arabic-speaking people. The Patriarch was always a Greek, a member of the Brotherhood…
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The Phanar vs. the French Revolution
In 1797, revolutionary France conquered the Republic of Venice, and, with it, the Ionian Islands, which were a Venetian possession but were inhabited by Greek Orthodox Christians. The next year, the Russian, British, and…