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Reports that top Orthodox Church clerics in Greece are attempting to salvage the church's credibility as various scandals emerged with clergymen implicated in drug dealing, antiquities theft, trial rigging and lewd conduct. Cases of suspensions against suspected clerics; Details of the individual cases.

Reports on the death of Africa's senior Greek Orthodox leader, Patriarch Petros VII of Alexandria, Egypt, and 12 other religious officials on September 11, 2004. when their helicopter crashed before its scheduled landing in Greece. Plan to visit the monastic community in Mount Athos, Greece; Accusations of Pasok, an oppositionist Socialist party, that the government delayed its rescue operations; Government inquiry into the causes of the crash.

Presents an obituary for Dmitri Dudko, Russian Orthodox priest and patriarch, who died at the age of 82.

The article reports on the Bulgarian Orthodox who condemns the effort of Pope Francis to unify and improve the relationship between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic.

The article reports on the move of Ukraine to set its autonomous Orthodox Church, establishing the stage for increased tensions against Russia by changing a religious tradition where the Kiev church answered to Moscow in 2018.

The article discusses the lawsuit filed in New Jersey by Eastern Orthodox Church spiritual leader Bartholomew I of Constantinople against Princeton University for stealing Byzantine-era manuscripts, however Princeton argued that the manuscripts were donated by a trustee and alumnus.

The article reports on the plan of the Russian Orthodox Church to sever all ties with its mother church Constantinople Patriarchate to oppose the creation of an independent church in Ukraine.

The article reports that protesters at the Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine have found a refuge at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate after they were attacked by riot police office on November 30, 2013.

The article reports on the decision of the Russian Orthodox Church not to participate in the gathering Holy and Great Council or the Pan-Orthodox Council, which put the 55-year of preparation for the gathering into disarray.

The article focuses on the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, a historical church building in Manhattan, New York City, which was gutted by a raging fire during the festive Orthodox Easter celebration.

The article reviews several exhibitions in New York City in January 2016 including "Photopoetics: An Anthology" at the Guggenheim Museum, "Unorthodox" at the Jewish Museum, and "Reimagining Modernism: 1900-1950" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The article reports growing controversy in Russia over local governments which have installed the teachings of the Russian Orthodox church as part of public school curriculums. The church has enjoyed a revival after years of suppression in the former Soviet Union. Introducing its doctrines into the schools, however, has caused opposition from persons who say the classes violate the separation of church and state and risk angering Russia's large Muslim minority.

The article reports the 100th anniversary of the death of saint Raphael Hawaweeny, who helped in building the Eastern Orthodox Church and presents views of parishioner Al Rahey on Raphael.

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles in previous issues including "Alone, Yet Not Alone" by David Brooks in the January 28, 2014 issue, "Bosnia's Lesson for Syria" by Philippe Leroux-Martin in the January 22, 2014 issue and "Quick Work on Paid Sick Leave" in the January 24, 2014 issue.

The article reports on the Greek Orthodox Church based in Brooklyn, New York City which links Greece to more than a million Greek-Americans serving Greek diaspora, immigrants traveling abroad and extends humanitarian assistance.

The article reports that an Orthodox Church will come at the south end of the National September 11 Memorial.

The article reviews several music releases by Arvo Pärt which include "Adam's Lament," Salve Regina," and "L'Abbé Agathon."

The article offers world news briefs in 2012. A 9-year-old boy was killed and several other children were wounded when a grenade was thrown into a church in Nairobi, Kenya. The University of Mississippi is celebrating the 50th anniversary of racial integration in the school. The "Burlington Free Press," noted to be the largest daily newspaper in Vermont, is struggling after making several revisions in June.

The authorities said Monday that they were searching for other members of the group Pussy Riot, indicating that the government was unmoved by international criticism of the two-year prison sentences imposed on three women who performed a ''punk prayer'' critical of President Vladimir V. Putin in an Orthodox cathedral in February. The judge in the case, Marina Syrova, noted that other unidentified people had taken part in the event. After Western governments criticized the verdict, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said Monday that there was no need to ''go into hysterics'' over the decision, which he said was not influenced by President Putin or the Orthodox Church. The authorities also signaled that they were considering criminal charges against the opposition politician Garry Kasparov, a former chess champion, after he was accused of biting a police officer during a protest on Friday, a charge he has denied. ANDREW ROTH [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CAIRO -- Pope Shenouda III, who led the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt for four decades, expanding the church's presence around the world as he struggled, often unsuccessfully, to protect his Christian minority at home, died on Saturday after a long illness, state media reported. Pope Shenouda, who was 88, had suffered from cancer and kidney problems for years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MOSCOW -- St. Petersburg's legislature passed a law on Wednesday aimed at eliminating what its backers called ''propaganda'' of homosexuality among minors, prompting fears among gay rights groups of an impending crackdown on their activities as other cities vowed to look into adopting similar measures. The law, which follows similar legislation passed elsewhere recently, appears to be a reaction to increasingly vocal efforts by gay rights groups, particularly in St. Petersburg and Moscow, to attract attention to the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MOSCOW -- A senior official of the Russian Orthodox Church has indicated that the church is moving toward a middle position between the government and opponents who staged two huge demonstrations last month, warning that if the authorities do not respond to people's concerns they could be ''slowly eaten alive.'' The official, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who oversees church and society relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, said in an essay and a radio interview on Thursday that Russia would never be the same after the demonstrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ON Columbia Place in Brooklyn Heights, improbably sandwiched between a Sardinian restaurant and a brick-walled cafe, stands a landmark in the history of housing for the poor. Its name is Riverside Houses, and it was created by the 19th-century philanthropist and urban visionary Alfred Tredway White. This complex of 260 apartments, designed for members of a largely immigrant working class, was considered so revolutionary that Jacob Riis, in ''How the Other Half Lives,'' described Riverside Houses as ''the beau ideal of the model tenement.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International ANTI-QADDAFI MILITIA [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The fire that severely damaged Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on Monday night sent ripples of distress across the Modern Orthodox community of Manhattan's East Side and among Jews around New York familiar with Ramaz, its affiliated school. The synagogue was where generations of congregants gathered to pray -- and schmooze -- on the Sabbath, the place where they married their beloved, bar mitzvahed their young, bade farewell to a dead parent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sara Jessica Natter, a daughter of Ellen J. Natter and Howard Natter of New York, is to be married Sunday afternoon to Daniel Fotios Valsamopoulos, the son of Stacy Valsamopoulos and Konstantinos F. Valsamopoulos, of Wantagh, N.Y. Rabbi Cantor Jill Hausman is to perform a ceremony that will include Jewish and Greek Orthodox elements at the Ritz-Carlton New York, Battery Park. The couple, both 29, met at Syracuse University, from which they both graduated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish leaders, determined to head off momentum for same-sex marriage in Albany, say they are mobilizing an extensive campaign to block legislation that would make New York the sixth state to allow gay men and lesbians to wed. ''Our pastors are fired up by the governor's assault on marriage,'' said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a lobbying group that represents evangelical churches in the state. ''We're already in gear.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

You look at the house where he lived and worked, where he created his works, and then you come to a place where there is nothing but this small hill. It was puzzling, on a human and a moral plane. And then I decided to write this letter. SERGEI V. STEPASHIN, on visiting the grave of Tolstoy, then asking the Russian Orthodox Church to forgive the author, who was excommunicated. [A1] [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

MOSCOW -- A couple of months ago one of Russia's elder statesmen set out on a paradoxical mission: to rehabilitate one of the most beloved figures in Russian history, Tolstoy. This would have seemed unnecessary in 2010, a century after the author's death. But last year Russians wrestled over Tolstoy much as they did when he was alive. Intellectuals accused the Russian Orthodox Church of blacklisting a national hero. The church accused Tolstoy of helping speed the rise of the Bolsheviks. The melodrama of his last days, when he fled his family estate to take up the life of an ascetic, was revived in all its pulpy detail, like some kind of early-stage reality television. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

JERUSALEM -- Chaim Amsellem was certainly not the first Parliament member to suggest that most ultra-Orthodox men should work rather than receive welfare subsidies for full-time Torah study. But when he did so last month, the nation took notice: He is a rabbi, ultra-Orthodox himself, whose outspokenness ignited a fresh, and fierce, debate about the rapid growth of the ultra-religious in Israel. ''Torah is the most important thing in the world,'' Rabbi Amsellem said in an interview. But now more than 60 percent of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel do not work, compared with 15 percent in the general population, and he argued that full-time, state-financed study should be reserved for great scholars destined to become rabbis or religious judges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Olga Komenko's girlhood memories live within the walls of the domed and cupolaed Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity at Pennsylvania and Glenmore Avenues in East New York. There, she danced Thursday evenings away with other young parishioners at weekly socials, wrote letters to servicemen during World War II and was married in 1944. Now 90, Mrs. Komenko sees the church playing one more major role in her life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prominent Orthodox rabbi who founded a respected Jewish day school in Brooklyn was convicted on Wednesday of trying to extort millions of dollars from a giant hedge fund. The rabbi, Milton Balkany, known for his access to senators and representatives, was accused of trying to persuade the hedge fund, SAC Capital, into paying to keep information that he said was damaging secret. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hilary Chasman Zwerdling and Nicholas William Papas were married Saturday in the Abbey Room of the Boston Public Library. Andrew M. Stone, a friend of the couple authorized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to officiate, led a service that incorporated Jewish and Greek Orthodox traditions. The bride, 30, is a vice president at M and R Strategic Services, a consultancy to nonprofit organizations, in Washington. She helps organizations develop online fund-raising and outreach programs. She graduated from Amherst and is pursuing an M.B.A. at George Washington University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As America lies in its state-induced moral stupor, lots of people die violent deaths all over the place, particularly in the Balkans. When it comes to externalizing evil, few things can rival geography or, for that matter, history. What's happening now in the Balkans is very simple: It is a bloodbath. Terms such as ''Serbs,'' ''Croats,'' ''Bosnians'' mean absolutely nothing. Any other combination of vowels and consonants will amount to the same thing: killing people. Neither religious distinctions -- Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim -- nor ethnic ones are of any consequence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A bomb exploded Wednesday at an Orthodox church in southern Ukraine, killing one person and wounding eight, officials said. The homemade device detonated near the entrance to the church in the southern city of Zaporizhzhya, said a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry, Yulia Barysheva. The bombing took place on the day Ukraine marks the anniversary of its conversion to Christianity in A.D. 988. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The decision by a Moscow court to fine the organizers of an art exhibition, ''Forbidden Art -- 2006,'' is a reminder about the continued limits on freedom of expression in Russia. True, the court could have gone further and actually jailed the two defendants. And the Russian Orthodox Church and the government at least argued against prison sentences. But the fact that this trial went on for two years and the two defendants were convicted of ''inciting religious hatred'' and fined -- about $6,500 for one and $4,800 for the other -- is chilling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

JERUSALEM -- Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews took to the streets of this city on Thursday to accompany dozens of Hasidic parents who were on their way to prison for two weeks after refusing to comply with a Supreme Court ruling against ethnic segregation in their children's school. This latest battle in Israel's simmering culture war, pitting ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim of European origin against their slightly less stringent ultra-Orthodox Sephardic peers from Arab and North African backgrounds, has raised accusations of racism on one side and infringement of religious freedom on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sometimes it seems as if we're doomed to fight a new culture war between orthodox liberals who have lavish faith in the power of government and orthodox conservatives who have almost no faith at all. But occasionally a politician comes along with a more measured vision of a limited but energetic government. Recently, for example, I read a speech by a politician who gave examples of both when government had failed (the old welfare system) and when it had succeeded (the railroad legislation under Lincoln, the bank reforms under F.D.R. and the highway system under Eisenhower). ''Our government shouldn't try to guarantee results,'' this politician said, ''but it should guarantee a shot at opportunity for every American who's willing to work hard.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

David G. Greenfield, the executive director of the Sephardic Community Federation, was elected Tuesday to succeed City Councilman Simcha Felder of Brooklyn in a seat that represents the Orthodox Jewish strongholds of Borough Park and Midwood and the ethnically mixed neighborhood of Bensonhurst. Mr. Greenfield, 31, won the special election by a surprisingly wide margin, defeating Joseph Lazar, a former Buildings Department official, after an intense and often acrimonious campaign that drew the involvement of some of the state's biggest political names. Mr. Greenfield won 58 percent of the vote, while Mr. Lazar garnered 40 percent, according to unofficial results. Kenneth Rice, a Police Department lawyer, finished third. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International ORTHODOX CHURCH PROJECT IMPERILS RUSSIAN BURIAL SITE [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An Orthodox rabbi who runs a respected Jewish day school in Brooklyn was charged on Thursday with trying to extort $4 million from a Connecticut hedge fund. The rabbi, Milton Balkany, the dean of the Bais Yaakov day school in Borough Park, is an influential fund-raiser and community leader known for his access to a wide circle of politicians. Mr. Balkany was accused, among other things, of trying to use his influence to extort the fund. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Patriarch Kirill I, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, would be willing to meet Pope Benedict XVI, but wants disputes with Catholics in Ukraine resolved first, a senior Orthodox cleric said Tuesday. A meeting with the pope would begin to heal the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, which split in 1054. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Eastern Rite Catholics who owe their allegiance to Rome took back some churches that had been confiscated by Communist authorities and given to the Orthodox Church. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three suspects in a drive-by shooting that killed six Christians in southern Egypt surrendered to the police on Friday. Security forces had blanketed the area between the village of Farshout and the town of Nag Hammadi, where gunmen fired on worshipers leaving a church after Mass for Coptic Orthodox Christmas Eve on Wednesday. Six Christians and a Muslim security guard were killed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples. ''We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence,'' it says. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For decades, prosecutors in Brooklyn routinely pursued child molesters from every major ethnic and religious segment of the borough's diverse population. Except one. Of some 700 child sexual abuse cases brought in an average year, few involved members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community -- about 180,000 followers of Hasidic and other sects who make up the largest such cluster outside Israel. Some years, there were one or two arrests, or none. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cal Oren was threading his way through the Santa Cruz Mountains of California early one evening in 1993, driving his wife, brother and three tired children back from a day of hiking amid the redwoods. As their car neared the town of Ben Lomond, Mr. Oren said, his brother pointed to a church on the roadside and said: ''I've been inside this. It's really neat.'' So Mr. Oren pulled to a stop, and as the children stayed in the car, the grown-ups gingerly padded into the sanctuary of Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church. A lifelong Presbyterian, Mr. Oren knew virtually nothing about the Antiochians or, for that matter, Orthodox Christianity in general. He had always associated Ben Lomond with hippies, geodesic domes and marijuana fields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On Saturday, as on every Saturday in recent weeks, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered before dusk on the terraces above the Carta parking lot just outside the Old City walls. In black silk Sabbath robes and fur hats, they lined up in rows, perched and waiting. Suddenly their foot soldiers arrived on the street below, protesters who surged past the newly opened luxury Mamilla Hotel. Police officers mounted on horses rushed to meet them as hotel guests looked on, bewildered, from windows on the upper floors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Russia's president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said Tuesday that the federal government would begin a national program to teach religious education in the schools. Parents would be able to choose studies in four federally recognized religions -- Russian Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism -- as well as a course in comparative religion. The issue of religious education in the public schools has been provocative, highlighting the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox church since the Soviet Union's collapse. Some regions have taken the initiative on their own and required courses in Russian Orthodoxy, stirring protests that they were infringing on constitutional boundaries. Seeking to sidestep that problem, Mr. Medvedev said students would have the option of a course in secular ethics instead. He said the national program would begin next year as a pilot project in 18 regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The part-time Correction Department rabbi who arranged for a prisoner convicted on a $1.7 million fraud charge to hold a lavish six-hour bar mitzvah party for his son in a New York City jail has long used his influence to transfer Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish inmates from jails on Rikers Island to a more hospitable one in Manhattan, several city officials said on Friday. The rabbi, Leib Glanz, whose role in the bizarre bar mitzvah episode and the transfers is the subject of a city investigation, is widely viewed within the agency as wielding so much political clout that he can aid the careers of favored managers, according to the officials, though none could say from where such power might emanate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BY conventional lights, the Rev. Mitro Repo's candidacy for the European Parliament never should have succeeded. As a Finnish Orthodox priest, he was bucking his superiors, who have strict rules about the mixing of politics and piety. As a Social Democrat, he was bucking the political tides sweeping Europe after the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]