​The local Kremlin bishop manufactured news again. At the conclusion of Holy and Great Lent and a day before Orthodox Holy Week commences, on the Saturday of Lazarus, April 24th, 2021 -The International Day of Remembrance for the Armenian Genocide, the local Moscow bishop, during a televised interview asserted in a dirty, ugly, and unprecedented declaration: 

"There were no genocides of Christian minorities during the Ottoman Empire."
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​His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been affectionately called “The Green Patriarch” in recognition of his global reputation as a leader promoting care of God’s creation. Accordingly, with the blessing of Metropolitan Methodios, the annual New England Archon Retreat will have the theme of “Greening the Parish: Answering the Green Patriarch’s Call.” The Retreat is being organized by Regional Commanders Dr. Aristotle Papanikolaou and Drake G. Behrakis and will be held via Zoom on Monday, April 19 at 7PM EDT. The featured speaker is Rev. Protopresbyter Nicolas Kazarian, Ecumenical Officer for Inter-Orthodox Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Father Nicolas will speak about the Ecumenical Patriarch’s work on environmental issues, along with the new initiative of the Archdiocese of America to green the parishes. In January 2021, the Department of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations began a four-part webinar series on Greening the Parish, featuring conversations between expert panelists on what it means to be a steward of creation through the lens of our Orthodox Christian theology, best practices, and daily action. This will also be the focus of the Retreat.
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Rev. Protopresbyter Nicolas Kazarian was born in France; he has an undergraduate degree from the Institute of Orthodox Theology Saint Serge in Paris, and continued his studies at the Universities of Cyprus in Nicosia, and Thessaloniki in Greece, before moving to Switzerland to start an MA in Orthodox Theology at the Orthodox Theological Institute of Chambésy. He completed his Ph.D. at the Sorbonne. He is the author of numerous publications about the Orthodox Church, ecumenical dialogue, interfaith relations and geopolitics in various languages. Along with his work as Ecumenical Officer and Director of the Department on Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, he is the parish priest of St. Eleftherios Greek Orthodox Church in Manhattan.

Also for more information on The Environment and Orthodoxy visit oikou.org