‘This is an important day for both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the entire Christian world, having a Metropolitan for the Church of Smyrna, after 94 years, with His Eminence Bartholomeos now at its helm.
Our presence is meant to empower the new hierarch in his high duties and mission, the word for which is ‘love, only love’, here at the cradle of the East that has been through times of greatness and disaster where religions and cultures coexist and memory meets life and hope’.
September 24, 2016