When Irene Pappas Delivered a Poignant Rendition of "Ti Ypermacho Stratigo" Inside Hagia Sophia in 1983

In 1983 the famous Greek actress and singer Irene Pappas delivered a poignant rendition of "Ti Ypermacho Stratigo" from within Hagia Sophia, though it was illegal to offer prayers out loud at the time. Afterwards, when asked about the experience, she said the following to a reporter: "The temple is desolate, naked, and you feel like it has lost all of its decorations. It's as if all this history from over the centuries has been washed away, the emperors and the empresses, a thousand one hundred years of history. You're saddened, you're very saddened, and yet I said Ti Ypermacho Stratigo. It's as if someone is victorious yet not victorious with the situation. They are victorious with their soul, just like the Greek people."

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Realism and Faith

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

June 2020

Observing the events of history and society, we find that humanity has gone through modernism in relation with rationalism, thought, science, progress, etc., and then came postmodernism, which challenged the sturdy foundations, challenged all certainties, objectivity, etc.

In an article of the Daily News, Tasoula Karaiskaki stressed that the seed of doubt and controversy, which characterizes our time, has become "dynamite that divides everything", "it has become a weapon in the hands of conspiracy theorists and populists, pseudo-experts, the superstitious and all kinds of deniers," who question everything such as "climate change, the sphericity of the earth, the effectiveness of vaccines, the existence of the coronavirus".

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The Diseases of Blissful Happiness

By George N. Papathanasopoulos

It is not only Greece that is showing symptoms of social disintegration, as we live in our daily lives and as projected by the Mass Media and Social Media. It is the so-called civilized West. Its countries and only these, for the most part, have democratic regimes, but in reality it is a luxurious and valuable building with treasures inside, which is collapsing. The sad thing is that none of the current leaders of the Western countries are sounding the alarm. They are all managers of decline… And if anyone dares to tell the truth about the moral nature of the modern West and reacts, he receives the fire of its followers. In March 2020, the French publisher Presses universitaires de France published the work of Hugues Lagrange, Deputy Director of Research at the National French Research Center, titled Les maladies du Bonheur. In it, the author describes the state of modern reality in the West. Its main finding is that social life is extinct in its countries as a "disease" that belongs to the past like the once deadly diseases (tuberculosis, malaria, etc.).

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Documentary Film: "Joseph the Hesychast" (2020)

A new documentary on the great 20th-century Athonite spiritual father St. Joseph the Hesychast, starring the Emmy-award winning Jonathan Jackson.

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A Turkish Film About a Crypto-Christian from Pontus

Directed by Yusuf Kurcenli, Yuregine Sor (Ask Your Heart) is a 2010 Turkish film which is a true story about a woman of Muslim faith (Esma) who falls in love with a Crypto-Christian (Mustafa). Prior to 1856, Christians had fewer rights than Muslims as citizens of the Ottoman Empire. For that reason, many Christians chose to practice Islam in public and Christianity in private.

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