For the 15th consecutive year, in the nearly 300-year history of Orthodoxy in Austria, the Dive for the Cross in the Danube, in Vienna, and the Great Blessing of the Waters took place.
Metropolitan Arsenios of Austria and Exarch of Hungary and Mid-Europe presided over the service.
The Dive for the Holy Cross took place on the Danube Canal, next to the historic Greek Quarter, in the center of Vienna.
Earlier, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in the Holy Metropolis of Austria, in the Greek Quarter, where the Greek National School, the oldest Greek school outside Greece, has been housed and operated since 1804.
Today, the total number of Orthodox believers in Austria is 500,000 – with most of them coming from the former Republic of Yugoslavia – while Orthodoxy is the second officially recognized Church in the country after Roman Catholic.
Source: ANA-MPA