The Bulgarian Orthodox Church Community "Sveti Sedmochislenitsi" in Rome and its missions in the cities of Anzio, Nettuno, Colleferro and the surrounding area marked the end of the old 2025 and the beginning of the new 2026 with a Divine Liturgy and a Thanksgiving Prayer for the health, blessing and salvation of all Bulgarians in the Homeland and beyond, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reports.
On the eve of the closing of the Holy Gates of the ancient basilicas in Rome, which is part of the church tradition in the West of opening and closing the Holy Gates every 25 years, rector and Orthodox Christians from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church Community "Sveti Sedmochislenitsi" also participated in a pilgrimage to the Basilica of "St. Peter", along with many other church communities from Rome, Europe and the whole world. Each group had its own leader and performed hymns from its church tradition, without mixing with the other pilgrims, we learn from the information of our church community in Rome, writes BNR.
The event is organized with the support of the church authorities in the Italian capital in connection with the Jubilee for 2025, which ends on January 6, 2026.
"This Western church tradition repeats the Orthodox tradition of opening and closing the Doors of the temples during the performance of the ritual at the end of the Paschal Easter Matins, which symbolizes the breaking of the gates of hell and the exit of the King of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead" – specify from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church of the Holy Seventy-Seventh Century.
The Bulgarian group of believers is led by our priest in Rome, Prof. Dr. Archpriest Ivan Ivanov. During the so-called Procession of the Cross, the Orthodox Bulgarians performed hymns for the feast of the Nativity of Christ, the prayer "Our Father" and hymns to the Virgin Mary. Finally, everyone bowed before the relics of the Holy Apostle Peter in the necropolis of the crypt of the basilica, as well as the relics of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory the Great, which lie in separate chapels in the central nave of "Saint Peter's."