Divine Liturgy is celebrated in the church of the Most Holy Theotokos in Ephesus, a place of the Third Ecumenical Council

DECR Communications Service, 22.09.2024.

On September 22, the commemoration day of the holy and righteous Joachim and Anna and the day of the remembrance of the Third Ecumenical Council (431), Rev. Georgy Sergeyev, who is responsible for taking pastoral care of the Moscow Patriarchate faithful in the territory of the Republic of Turkey, celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the church of the Most Holy Theotokos in Ephesus, where the Council met.

The service was attended by pilgrims who arrived from Istanbul, Cambridge in Great Britain, Izmir and Kuşadasi. Most of them received the Holy Mysteries of Christ.

At the end of the Liturgy, Fr Georgy addressed the faithful and explained the dogmas of the Third Ecumenical Council.

He thanked the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey for the permission to celebrate in the church of the Most Holy Theotokos, located in the Ephesus Museum, and also Mr. Andrei V. Ponomarev, chairman of the Solzhenitsyn Association of Russian Language and Literary Study in Izmir, for his help in arranging the pilgrimage.

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The ruins of the very first ‘church named after Mary’ have been preserved in Ephesus.

The first building on this site was a Roman basilica of the 2nd century rebuilt three centuries later. The Third Ecumenical Council met here in 431AD and gave formal approval of the Theotokos.

It was in this church that St. Cyril of Alexandria delivered his discourse immediately after Nestorius had been deposed in 431AD. It is evidenced by the title, ‘delivered to Nestorius, when the seven came to the Church of Mary in Ephesus.’

The church was rebuilt many times. In the 7th century, another church was added to it, and it became known as the Double Church.

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Divine Liturgy is celebrated in the church of the Most Holy Theotokos in Ephesus, a place of the Third Ecumenical Council

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons