One wonders if the bishops of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria in sub-Saharan Africa share with their Roman Catholic counterparts their harsh stance against the basic human rights of LGBTQ citizens of their respective countries.

“It Is Better to Die of Hunger” Than to Accept Homosexuality, Says Tanzanian Cardinal

by Robert Shine

It would be better to starve to death than to accept homosexuality, said a top African church leader while asking government officials to reject foreign aid allegedly tied to advancing LGBT equality.

Polycarp Cardinal Pengo

Cardinal Polycarp Pengo of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, made his comments during a Mass last month that celebrated the harvest. A news report posted by the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa explained:

[Pengo] said that there are some threats from developed countries alleging that “they will stop support us if we are against homosexuality. It is better to die of hunger than to receive aid and be compelled to do things that are contrary to God’s desire,” Cardinal Pengo said adding that “the sin of homosexuality was the cause of destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and that, these things are contrary to God’s plan in creation and should not be accepted at all.”

He thanked the Tanzanian Government for its position on the matter while stressing that all Tanzanians should say no to homosexual which apparently is encroaching very fast in African countries.

“We cannot accept such displeasing things to God; and if we are starving because we have refused to engage in such acts, then we would rather die with our God. Accepting homosexual is denying God,” Cardinal Pengo further expressed. [Editor’s note:  What may seem like grammatical errors or typos in the above quotes from the cardinal are actually variations in spoken English used in Tanzania.] Read More

As far back as 1996, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington predicted the rise of “political Orthodoxy” in Russia as a global geopolitical threat no less powerful and nefarious than political Islam. Some fifteen or so years later, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin announced the transplantation of “Byzantine symphonia” — a model of church-state “co-voice” — from 14th-century Byzantium to 21st-century Russia. The current escalation of Russian military aggression against Ukraine on the eve of the Ukrainian Church’s reception of autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate leaves us no choice but to take them at their word: Church and Kremlin indeed speak with one voice in Russia. 

Russia’s New Military Cathedral Will Train War Priests — Reports

A Russian Orthodox cathedral set to be built for the country’s armed forces will reportedly train military priests, the head of a foundation in charge of collecting donations for its  construction has said.

Blueprints for the Armed Forces cathedral were reportedly unveiled at the Venice Bienalle on Thursday, two months after the Russian Defense Ministry began collecting donations to build the megastructure. Reports this year disclosed plans to train priests embedded with the Airborne Troops to drive combat vehicles and operate communication equipment. Read More

Archbishop Demetrios (L) of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and Metropolitan Tikhon (R) of the Orthodox Church in America

By day’s end the above photo from the funeral of President George H.W. Bush was making the rounds of Facebook and—predictably enough—drawing equal amounts of praise and condemnation from Orthodox Christians.

The former comes from those who find it only natural that the Orthodox Church should assume a visible presence in American public life; the latter, from those who lose no opportunity to condemn the “heresy” of ecumenism as a sell-out to the purity of the Orthodox faith, expressed especially in the canonical prohibition against “praying with heretics.” How dare Orthodox hierarchs attend a heterodox church service—even the funeral of a former US president?

The discerning eye will note that neither the Archbishop nor the Metropolitan is wearing any article of liturgical vestment, such as his omophorion. They are both dressed as simple monks, with the minimum possible insignia of their episcopal rank: the staff, the panagia (an icon of the Mother of God suspended from a chain around the neck), and—in the Metropolitan’s case—the white headpiece adorned with a small jeweled cross, distinctive to the Russian tradition to signify a metropolitan.  Read More