Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, expressed his condolences to H.E. Goodluck Jonathan, President of the Republic of Nigeria, upon terrorist attacks perpetrated on the campus of Bayero Christian University on 29 April 2012.

We often regard the author of the Gospel of Mark as an obscure figure about whom we know little. Many would be surprised to learn how much fuller a picture of Mark exists within widespread African tradition, tradition that holds that Mark himself was from North Africa, that he founded the church in Alexandria, that he was an eyewitness to the Last Supper and Pentecost, that he was related not only to Barnabas but to Peter as well and accompanied him on many of his travels.In this provocative reassessment of early church tradition, Thomas C. Oden begins with the palette of New Testament evidence and adds to it the range of colors from traditional African sources, including synaxaries (compilations of short biographies of saints to be read on feast days), archaeological sites, non-Western historical documents and ancient churches. The result is a fresh and illuminating portrait of Mark, one that is deeply rooted in African memory and seldom viewed appreciatively in the West. 

Dumbarton Oaks will hold a symposium entitled ‘Rome Re-Imagined: Byzantine and Early Islamic Africa, c. 500–800’, from April 27–29, 2012. The event is organised by Susan T. Stevens, Randolph College and Jonathan P. Conant, Brown University.

On February 20, 2012, Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the DECR and rector of the SS Cyril and Methodius Post-Graduate and Doctoral School, visited the Moscow theological schools to deliver the following lecture to the faculty and students:

Interview with Michel Willy Limambu, Academic General Secretary of the Catholic University of Congo, on the current situation of patrology in Africa.