Orthodox Liturgy Celebrated at North Pole

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"...verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." - Romans 10:18

The first ever Orthodox Divine Liturgy was celebrated at the North Pole on April 6th.

The Liturgy was celebrated by Archbishop Ignaty of Petropavlovsk and Kamchatka, two Priests and a Deacon from the Diocese and a small group of worshippers from Camp Barneo.

This article from Interfax has the details.

An interview with Archbishop Ignaty on the service can be found here. The interview quotes Archbishop Ignaty as stating:

"We put up our church tent in cold strong wind, in the snow, and the shining sunlight. It was twenty five degrees below, and we had to serve in our full vestments, sing, and hold metal bowls. But deep in our hearts we believed that everything would work out well. It was very cold at first, our hands were frozen. But when it came to the cherubimic hymn, and we approached the main event of the liturgy - the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, even the slightest feeling of cold disappeared. We felt that way to the end of the Divine Liturgy."

Interestingly, there is also a permanent Orthodox Chapel located in Antarctica.