Patriarch Neofit, the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, is serving the traditional Christmas Day service at the St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia.

Neofit is casting a prayer for good health and long lives and with a blessing to all Bulgarian Orthodox Christians around the world.

He has called for love and help for the sick and lonely and also for those lacking basic living conditions.

"Let us put our Christian faith and our Christian hope into action by thinking of those who Jesus did not despise - those wronged, humiliated and injured by showing them the greatness of Nativity and how it changes even the most hopelessly looking life" Neofit has said.

Unlike the Eastern Orthodox churches of Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Montenegro, Georgia, and Macedonia, who celebrate Christmas on January 7 according to the older Julian calendar, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church together with the Orthodox Churches of Greece, Romania, the Orthodox Church in America, among others, celebrates Christmas on December 25, on the same day as Western Christianity under the Gregorian Calendar.

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