Meeting on 18 March in Warsaw under the wise leadership of Metropolitan Sava, the Bishops’ Council of the Polish Orthodox Church decided to return to the Orthodox calendar. In this way the Bishops’ Council has overturned the lamentable decision made ninety years ago on 12 April 1924, under pressure from the notorious freemason and modernist, the Anglican-installed Patriarch Meliton of Constantinople, to introduce the secular, Roman Catholic calendar for the fixed feasts. It was that controversial and later deposed Patriarch who also did so much to divide the Russian Church by encroaching on its territorial integrity, especially in Poland, Finland and the Diaspora. This victory for Orthodoxy will come into force in Poland on All Saints’ Sunday, 15 June 2014.

The Polish Orthodox Church thus shows its solidarity with the vast majority of Orthodox, especially other Slav Orthodox in Russia, the Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia, but also with the Churches of Georgia, Jerusalem and of course Mt Athos. It is to be hoped that the last remaining new-style Slav Churches of Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia will follow suit. May this move be an inspiration to those who fell into the calendar decadence of the past. For only when the Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian Churches have returned to the Orthodox calendar will their disastrous, sectarian calendar schisms be overcome. It is to be hoped that at the 2016 Inter-Orthodox Council the 80% of the Orthodox Church that remained faithful to the Orthodox calendar can persuade the erring minority to return to the fullness of Orthodox practice. Then the Church bells will ring for joy all around the Orthodox world.