ROC will be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day
Moscow. 9 Mar. INTERFAX.RU the Russian Orthodox Church will now be March 30 to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day received special recognition as a patron Saint of Ireland.
“An important issue discussed during today’s meeting of the Holy Synod, was the inclusion in a calendar of the names of ancient saints who labored in the countries of Central and Western Europe until 1054. In total in a calendar included the names of more than a dozen saints who labored in Western countries, including Saint Patrick, enlightener of Ireland, better known among the faithful of our country as St. Patrick”, — said the correspondent of “Interfax” on Thursday the head of the Synodal Department for Church and society and the media Vladimir Legoyda.
According to him, the formation of the list of saints was based on information about their worship of the Orthodox in Western European dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church, and also on the basis of the tradition of their veneration in other local Orthodox churches.
“Taking into account the integrity of the profession of their Orthodox faith, the circumstances under which the glorification and the lack of mention of the name of the Saint in the polemical writings against the Eastern Church and the Eastern rite,” — said Legoyda.
St. Patrick’s day is celebrated every year in Western countries, 17 March — the day of earthly death of the patron Saint of Ireland (C. 385-461 ad). On March 30, when the festival will celebrate the ROC is 17 March, old style.
The holiday was declared Christian in the early seventeenth century and is celebrated separate Catholic and Protestant churches (Anglican, Lutheran). St. Patrick’s day is a public holiday in Ireland, Northern Ireland, on the island of Montserrat and the canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish Diaspora around the world, especially in the UK, Canada, USA, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand.
In Russia in recent decades, the feast day of St. Patrick, as in many other countries around the world held a solemn procession and in the evening, the buildings lit the green light in the color clover (Shamrock) with which St. Patrick, according to legend, explained to the Irish the meaning of Trinity.
St. Patrick devoted a lot of cathedrals and churches around the world, the most famous of which is Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, built in 1191. The rector in the eighteenth century was the writer and philosopher Jonathan swift.