PATRIARCHATE, or Nesiʾut, was the leading Jewish communal office in the Late Roman and Byzantine Empires, emerging soon after the destruction of the city and Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE and disappearing in the first part of the fifth century....

A patriarchate is the office or jurisdiction of a patriarch. A patriarch, as the term is used here, is...

A court Tuesday backed Turkey's long-held position that the Istanbul-based Orthodox Patriarch is only the head of the city's tiny Greek Orthodox community and not the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.The decision has no influence on the status of Ecumenical Patriarch...

A groundbreaking meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Russian Orthodox patriarch could take place within a year, a senior Vatican cardinal said Thursday, according to the news agency of the Italian bishops conference.Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Vatican office for relations with other...

Patriarch Alexy II on Tuesday consecrated 18 newly cast brass bells destined for Harvard University in a trade that will see the originals returned to Russia nearly 80 years after they were saved from Josef Stalin's religious purges.The originals have hung for decades in the...

The Orthodox archbishop of Cyprus is offering himself as a mediator to try to set up a groundbreaking meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Russian Orthodox patriarch of Moscow, an Italian newsweekly reported on Thursday.Cypriot Archbishop Chrysostomos II will be received on June 16...