Georgian Orthodox Church elects new leader at fraught time for the influential institution
Patriarch Shio III of the Georgian Orthodox Church during his enthronement at the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, outside Tbilisi, Georgia, Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (AP Photo)
(RNS) — ‘It’s really the textbook example of a national church being the cornerstone of national identity,’ Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Belgium’s University of Liège, told RNS.
