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Your Holiness, Beloved Brother in Christ, Pope Leo,

It is with feelings of sincere joy and thanksgiving that we welcome You again today to this sacred center of Orthodoxy, as Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras welcomed Pope Paul VI, as Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios welcomed Pope John Paul II, and as our Modesty welcomed Your illustrious predecessors Benedict XVI and Francis. Today, we receive You, in turn, in the venerable Patriarchal Church of Saint George, where we celebrated the Divine Liturgy on the occasion of the feast of the holy Apostle Andrew the First-called; during which we heard the reading of the Gospel recalling the vocation of the two brothers Andrew and Peter – the first Apostles of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

As the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian relates, Andrew was one of the two disciples of Saint John the Forerunner who indicated Jesus Christ to them, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” Andrew not only immediately followed Him, but also found his brother Simon, telling him: “We have found the Messiah”, and brought him to the Lord, who declared: “So you are Simon? You shall be called Cephas-Peter” (Jn. 1:35-42). Thus, through this calling, the two brothers left their fishing nets on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to become fishers of men, casting the nets of the Church through the preaching of the Good News of salvation to the ends of the earth.

On this solemn day of jubilee, not only does the memory of the First-Called Apostle gathers us, but also the presence among us of the precious holy relics of the two brother-Apostles, which were graciously offered to us by your predecessors. Furthermore, we cannot ignore that the icon of the kiss of Saints Peter and Andrew has, for more than half a century, become the symbol of our shared pilgrimage toward Christian unity, constantly reminding the world that “we have found the Messiah”.

As successors of the two holy Apostles, the founders of our respective Churches, we feel bound by ties of spiritual brotherhood, which obligate us to work diligently to proclaim the message of salvation to the world. Your blessed visit today, just like the exchange of delegations from our Churches on the occasion of our respective thronal feasts, cannot be reduced to events of mere protocol, but on the contrary, express in a very concrete and personal way our deep commitment to the quest for Christian unity and our sincere aspiration to the restoration of full ecclesial communion.

This was made possible 60 years ago by the lifting of the anathemas of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople on December 7^th, 1965. In the respective Common Declaration Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras proclaimed their common conviction that they were “responding to the call of that divine grace, which today is leading the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, as well as all Christians, to overcome their differences in order to be again ‘one’ as the Lord Jesus asked of His Father for them” (Common Declaration, 1).

Thus, this historic event, following the ‘winter’ of divisions, can rightly be called a spiritual ‘spring’ for our Churches, inaugurating a new chapter in our mutual relations, seeking afresh to overcome our differences from the past. As it was then asserted, “through the action of the Holy Spirit those differences will be overcome through cleansing of hearts, through regret for historical wrongs, and through an efficacious determination to arrive at a common understanding and expression of the faith of the Apostles and its demands” (Common Declaration, 5).

Fidelity to the apostolic faith is precisely the meaning of this year’s celebration of the 1700^th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, with which your visit also coincides. It is, therefore, in this spirit that our joint pilgrimage the day before yesterday to this historic site of Christendom, together with His Beatitude Pope and Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria and the official representatives of Their Beatitudes Patriarchs John of Antioch and Theophilos of Jerusalem, with whom we concelebrated the Divine Liturgy today, cannot in any way be reduced to an interest in a past event. The Symbol of Faith promulgated by the Council of Nicaea proves to be a confession of faith that transcends space and time, reaffirming the faith of the Church received from the Apostles. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4-6), as it is the motto of Your Apostolic Journey.

Divinely inspired by the action of the Holy Spirit, the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea strengthened ecclesiastical unity. As attested by one of the protagonists of the Council, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, in his letter to the bishops of Africa, the Nicene Council was convened by the Emperor Constantine primarily to resolve the division caused within the Church by the Arian heresy and to decide on a common date for the annual celebration of Pascha, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the foundation of our faith (PG 26, 1032CD). Indeed, “if Christ has not risen, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor. 15:14). And the First Ecumenical Council remains the foundation in our quest for Christian unity today. Its Symbol of Faith, its canons and its decisions, especially the one pertaining to the establishment of shared criteria for calculating a common date of Pascha, constitute the heritage of all Christendom, and it is only by deepening this rich inheritance that the divided Christians will draw closer to one another and achieve their much-desired unity.

As the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (Crete, June 2016) reminded us, “the responsibility of the Orthodox Church for unity as well as her ecumenical mission were articulated by the Ecumenical Councils. These stressed most especially the indissoluble bond between true faith and sacramental communion” (Relations of the Orthodox Church with the Rest of the Christian World, 3). It also underlined that the faith in the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in the One Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior in accordance with the Scriptures and with the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is the essential criterion for the engagement of the Orthodox Church in the Ecumenical Movement, her membership in the World Council of Churches and the Conference of European Churches, as well as her participation in bilateral and multilateral theological dialogues (Cf. Ibid., 19).

Celebrating these blessed anniversaries, we rejoice that the lifting of the anathemas, which inaugurated a dialogue of love, has led to the dialogue of truth conducted primarily within the Joint International Commission for theological dialogue between our two sister Churches, established by our predecessors Pope John Paul II and Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios. The work done over the past 45 years, which began by examining what we share in common, has cultivated a spirit of brotherhood and developed mutual trust and understanding, and enables our Churches at this critical moment in history to address the thorny issues of the past in order to overcome them and lead us towards the restoration of full communion.

It is remarkable that the reflection on Synodality and Primacy undertaken in recent years within the Commission has proven to be a source of inspiration and renewal not only for our sister Churches, but also for the rest of the Christian world. We can only pray that issues such as the “filioque” and infallibility, which the Commission is currently examining, will be resolved such that their understanding no longer serve as stumbling blocks to the communion of our Churches.

In the end, Christian unity is not a luxury. It is the ultimate prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ: “that…all may be one” (Jn. 17:21) and also the essential condition for the mission of the Church. Christian unity is an imperative, particularly in our tumultuous times, when the world is fractured by wars, violence and all kinds of discrimination, while it is devastated by the desire for domination, the quest for profit, and the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources.

Faced with so much suffering, the whole creation that is “groaning” (Rom. 8:22) expects a unified message of hope from Christians unequivocally condemning war and violence, defending human dignity and respecting and caring for God’s creation. We cannot be complicit in the bloodshed taking place in Ukraine and other parts of the world and remain silent in the face of the exodus of Christians from the cradle of Christianity or be indifferent to the injustices suffered by the “least of the brothers” of our Lord (Matt. 25:31-46). We cannot ignore the problems of pollution, waste and climate change. We must act as peacemakers (Matt. 5:9), show ourselves as those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matt. 5:6), and we must behave as good stewards of creation (Gen. 1:26).

Your Holiness,

With these humble thoughts, we would like to express our fervent gratitude for Your visit to our City and its Church and Your participation in these solemn festivities. May our holy and great founders and patrons – the holy glorious and all-laudable Apostles Andrew the First-Called and Peter the Coryphaeus – intercede for us all before the One whom they faithfully served and preached “unto the ends of the world.” May they continue to inspire us all with the breadth of their ecclesial vision and with the resolve of their apostolic mission, so that we may continue our common pilgrimage in quest of Christian unity and bear witness together so that the world may believe that “we have found the Messiah.”

Once again, we welcome You, dearly beloved brother in Christ!

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Φωτό: Αλέξανδρος Μπελτές