Palm Sunday starts Holy Week for Orthodox churches
4/15/2006The 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, including 6 million in the United States, will enter Holy Week tomorrow with Palm Sunday.
Orthodox Pascha, or Easter, will be April 23.
The date for Easter shifts every year with the Gregorian Calendar, and Eastern Orthodox observances can vary from one to four weeks from those of Western Christianity because different parameters are used for calculating the date of the holiday.
Western churches follow a complex formula established at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.
In the Orthodox Christian church, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon after Passover, usually one week after most of the world s 2 billion Christians celebrate theirs.
The Orthodox Christian churches in the Toledo area are Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Superior Street; St. George Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral on Woodley Road; St. Elias Eastern Orthodox Church on Harroun Road, and St. George Orthodox Church in America in Rossford.