British Orthodox Saints’ Day

1) Icon of All Saints of Great Britain and Ireland

2) The earliest extant image of the Theotokos in the British Isles (from the wooden coffin of St Cuthbert, dated to A.D. 698)

The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church instituted a holiday to honor Christians who lived on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and were canonized before the 1054 schism that divided Christendom into the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The holiday will be an annual event observed on the third Sunday after Pentecost. The Synod, which met on Tuesday, also ordered that these saints’ names be included in the Menology after their Christian exploits have been studied. The Synod’s decision follows an appeal of March 3, 2007, in which the diocese of Sourozh, the Russian Orthodox diocese having the islands of Great Britain and Ireland for its territory, asked the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, and its Holy Synod to institute a holiday for pre-1054 British and Irish saints.

The Story.

Images and text lifted from the Clergy Brotherhood Memo of the Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America, August 22, 2007.