Приход Русской Православной Церкви в России и за рубежом. Материалы к изучению приходской жизни. Выпуск 5. Православные приходы греческого мира (Греция, Кипр). Место и роль русскоязычных общин - стр. 5

The third part of the collection The Role of the Russian-speaking community in society. Parishioners’ Review includes interviews and focus group of parishioners, both Russian-speaking and Greek communities. Churchwomen of Saint Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church in Thessaloniki, Pontic elder women, who have carried their faith through all their lives under conditions of emigration and seeking for homeland, tell about keeping orthodox traditions early in Soviet Georgia, and then in modern Greece. A group interview with women volunteers, churchwomen of the church of St. George (Thessalonica) is dedicated to the traditions of free meals as a social mission of Greek Orthodox Church’ parishes. This part of the collection ends with an interview of a churchwoman of the Russian-language St. Nicholas church in Limassol, which introduces parishioners’ views of the priest’s role in a parish abroad to the reader.

Materials collected in parishes in Russia made valuable contribution to the collection, having become a certain background for comparison – priests, charity providers, parishioners of the Tikhvinskaya eparchy of St. Petersburg metropolis share their many-years experience of social serving and fighting alcohol and drug addictions on the pages of the fifth collection.

Their interviews are included in the fourth part “Parish in Russia. Experience of St. Petersburg Metropolis in Dealing with Socially Unprotected Groups of Population” of the collection. It begins with an interview of a young priest, the abbot of the Church of the Nativity of the Church of the Holy Trinity of Alexander of Svir friary mission of St. Petersburg, priest Sergey Lyadve, whose priest service is carried out in one of the rough parts of St. Petersburg – so-called “Vesyoly Posyolok” (Jolly Town). In his interview he shares the experience of organizing help groups for alcohol- and drug addicts within a parish. Elena Rydavlevskaya, the Executive Director of the Diakoniya charity fund, continues studying the topic of social service helping alcohol- and drug addicts. She managed to develop a system project for such help involving church and state authorities, business and philanthropists. Another priest’s interview of this part of the collection gives an account of everyday life of a rehabilitation center for alcohol- and drug addicts under parish in the Sologubovka settlement of the Kirov district of the Leningrad Region. An interview of parishioner of the Church of the Nativity of the Church of the Holy Trinity of Alexander of Svir friary mission Ekaterina Bashkirova turns over another page of parish social service – “Mercy Bus”, rendering help to the homeless. In her interview she shares the experience of communicating with homeless people, organizing such a mission within a parish. This part of the collection ends with an interview of a 60-year woman, a parishioner of the Church of the Nativity of the Church of the Holy Trinity of Alexander of Svir friary mission, an alcohol addict in the recent past. It describes the alcohol addict’s walk of life and the role of orthodox parish in overcoming this addiction.