Your Eminence Cardinal Law,
Your Eminence Archbishop Spyridon,
Your Grace Bishop Methodios,
Honored guests,
Beloved children in the Lord,

Above all, we thank and glorify our All-Good God, the spiritual Sun of righteousness, Who has dawned upon us with His light.  He has gathered us together in this brotherly banquet of love and fellowship, in all sincerity and simplicity of heart, as did the first Christians of the Apostolic Age.
We express our gratitude to you, Your Eminence and beloved brother in Christ, Cardinal Law, for this wonderful opportunity for sociability between Orthodox and Roman Catholics.  You have returned the joy we experienced last year when you visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate with our brother, Bishop Methodios of Boston.  We feel much gladness and satisfaction for this blessed and new meeting.  Finally, we express our thanks to all the other Hierarchs of both Old and New Rome, whom we find gathered with us today at our morning encounter.
The side-by-side presence of the Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics in this beautiful and noble city of Boston, and in the greater region of New England, has contributed significantly to its life and cultural climate.  As is commonly known, the forebears of Boston and New England were Anglo-Saxon Protestants, who attempted to create an ideal society, according to their doctrinal and ethical understandings.  They were ideological refugees from the wars and persecutions of the European Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  The later addition of other ethnic and especially religious elements was not achieved easily.
As Church leaders, we do not follow the development of society through the prism of political engagement in the affairs of life.  Rather, we see the clear perspective provided by the observation point of our apostolic responsibilities, through the laying on of hands, which comes to us as both a commandment and a charisma.  In the pastoral field, the relations between our Churches have arrived at a phase of maturity, which permit us to put forward specific common objectives.  We must undertake a deeper study of our shared inheritance, of the mystical experience of the ancient undivided Church, through which we will partake of the unadulterated well-springs of our tradition.
In this pastoral field, we can make many offerings to the spiritually hungry and thirsty American people.  Our encounter ought to concern offering them the riches of the Christian writings of the first Christian centuries in their own language, as proof that both Churches are returning to these sources.  Let us contribute to people’s ability to study these sources for themselves and to form responsible personal opinions, even though there is the inevitable danger of them falling into error.  It is not enough for Man, created in the image of God and destined according to be in His likeness, to enjoy only material prosperity, but he seeks to be nourished by the word f God, uninfluenced by bias.  Consequently, our responsibilities are great and weighty, not only as regards our faithful, but as regards the unbeliever.  They demand that we work reciprocally for the creation of blessed proposals for the re-kindling and substantive continuation of the Theological Dialogue between our Churches.  They demand as well that we work to sensitize and enlighten our own flocks, that we may all become good stewards of the earth and confront difficult ecological problems.  Our responsibilities, as we draw near to the third millennium of dispensation of Christ, urge us to encounters like this and to prayer.  For Christianity, which in the first thousand years was graced in the dissemination of the faith, has fallen down in the second thousand to the detriment of the work of the first.  As we stand before the third millennium, we ought to recognize the faults of Christianity, to repent and return to its undisputed beginnings.  If we do not do so, will not a curse await us, when the Lord returns to His earth?
We thank you for your attention and your love.  Our personal love overshadows this event without darkness, but yet the general problem has not yet been cast out of our midst, that would consist of a full and realized unity.  For this we would dissolve to tears.  So be it.