Holy Fire

Thousands of Palestinian Christians and pilgrims from around the world filled Jerusalem's Old City on Saturday to celebrate the Orthodox Holy Light ceremony, under a heavy Israeli police presence that has drawn anger from churches.

Israeli police will curb the number of worshippers in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for safety reasons during Orthodox Easter ceremonies on Saturday, drawing anger from church leaders who said they would not cooperate.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Wednesday said there would be no relaxation of curfew rules in Serbia over Orthodox Easter this weekend - after the Church asked for the weekend curfew to be lifted on Sunday from 5am to 10am to let believers leave home and attend churches for the liturgy.

The Holy Light will remain in Athens and will not be distributed to churches this time.

The Holy Light, which arrives on the eve of Easter every year from Jerusalem, having been lit miraculously, according to Christian lore, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Israel is working with foreign governments and Orthodox Christian leaders in the Holy Land to make sure that one of their most ancient and mysterious rituals - the Holy Fire ceremony - is not extinguished by the coronavirus outbreak, officials said Friday.

A lantern carrying a flame lit in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulcher Church has been welcomed to Greece with honors reserved for visiting heads of state on the eve of Orthodox Easter.

But a senior cleric boycotted the ceremony, miffed that the holy flame wasn't arriving at the airport within his territorial jurisdiction.

The Holy Light from Jerusalem will be brought on Saturday evening aboard a special aircraft by a delegation of the Romanian Patriarchy, headed by Vicar Bishop of the Archbishopric of Bucharest Timotei Prahoveanul.

The Holy Light will be offered at the Resurrection mass by Romanian Orthodox Church Patriarch Daniel to the clergy and believers present at the Patriarchal Cathedral.

The Holy Fire arrived at the Athens International Airport at 19.30 and was received with honours of a state leader during a special ceremony. The Holy Fire was lit earlier in Jerusalem where the an official  Greek governmental delegation received it and boarded on the Prime Ministerial airplane and flown back to Athens.

 It is Holy Saturday today, the last day of the Holy week before Resurrection Sunday. Holy Saturday, also known as the Easter Eve commemorates the day that Jesus Christ's body lay in the tomb.

On this day the Holy Fire descends from the skies above the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem into the hands of the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Leftist SYRIZA MP Makis Balaouras criticised the Greek state for continuing to adopt the tradition of receiving the Holy Fire from Jerusalem during Easter as a head of state. “An object, the fire, the Holy Fire arrives. It is something that does not happen in a civilised state”, he said in Greek parliament. The PM dubbed it a remnant of a pagan era during his speech.