Did you know that every year 300 million people celebrate Easter at a different time from the church in the West? Did you know that 300,000 of them actually live in Britain? The Eastern Orthodox Church lives on . . .
The 'Byzantine Tradition' stretches from Russia through countries like Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, all the way down to Greece and Cyprus.
Byzantium, another name for Constantinople (Istanbul), the capital of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, was, and still is, the capital of the Orthodox Church, despite Turkish occupation since 1453. The Patriarch of Constantinople is the titular head of the Orthodox Church but does not have the absolute power which the Pope has over the Roman Catholic church.
