same-sex marriage. Jesus said that "when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mk 12:25). For the Orthodox Christian this passage should not be understood to imply that Christian marriage will not remain a reality in the Kingdom, but points to the fact that relations will not be "fleshy", but "spiritual". Love between wife and husband, as an icon of relationship between Christ and Church, is eternal. The church does recognise that there are rare occasions when it is better that couples do separate, but there is no official recognition of civil divorces. For the E. Orthodox, to say that marriage is indissoluble means that it should not be broken, the violation of such a union, perceived as holy, being an offense resulting from either adultery or the prolonged absence of one of the partners. Thus, permitting remarriage is an act of compassion of the church towards sinful man. Holy orders Widowed priests and deacons may not remarry and it is common for such members of the clergy to retire to a monastery (see clerical celibacy). This is also true of widowed wives of clergy, who do not remarry and become nuns when their children are grown. Only men are allowed to receive holy orders, although deaconesses had both liturgical and pastoral functions within the church. In 2016, the Patriarchate of Alexandria decided to reintroduce the order of deaconess. In February 2017, Patriarch Theodore II consecrated five women to be deacons within the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Distribution Eastern Orthodoxy is the predominant religion in the world's largest country, Russia (77%), where roughly half the world's Eastern Orthodox Christians live. The religion is also heavily concentrated in the rest of Eastern Europe, where it is the majority religion in Ukraine (65.4%–77%), Romania (82%), Belarus (48%–73%), Greece (95%–98%), Serbia (97%), Bulgaria (88%), Moldova (93%), Georgia (84%), North Macedonia (65%), Cyprus (89%) and Montenegro (72%); it is also predominant in the disputed territories of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. Significant minorities are present in several European countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina (31%), Latvia (18%), Estonia (14%), Albania (7%), Lithuania (4%), Croatia (4%), Slovenia (2%), and Finland (1.5%). In the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, Eastern Orthodoxy constitutes the dominant religion in northern Kazakhstan, representing 23.9% of the population of the region, and is also a significant minority in Kyrgyzstan (17%), Turkmenistan