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“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.” (Ps. 117:26)
Your Holiness, Dearly Beloved Brother in Christ,
The Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Great Church of Christ, welcomes You on this day with great joy and jubilation, in the same spirit of fraternal love by which it received Your illustrious predecessors, Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis of blessed memory, who contributed greatly, each in their own way, with their own charisma, to the rapprochement of our sister Churches through the dialogue of love and truth, in accordance with the Holy Apostle Peter’s exhortation, to “make every effort to supplement [our] faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love” (2 Pet. 1:5-7).
It is this love that brought us to Your inauguration service in the Vatican. It is this love that guided Your first trip abroad, beyond Italy, here, to the sacred Center of Orthodox Christianity, in response to our brotherly invitation.
It is in this spirit of friendship and love, that we made a mutual promise with Your imminent predecessor, Pope Francis, to join in a common pilgrimage to the historic City of Nicaea, on the occasion of the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council, a council of unity in the apostolic faith, a single voice of the unified Church.
Unfortunately, this pilgrimage was not divinely deigned to take place with Pope Francis, as his falling asleep in the Lord on the second day of the blessed feast of feasts, Pascha, abruptly ended his earthly life and worldly ministry. This promise however, was fulfilled yesterday by both of us, Your Holiness. We are persuaded that his soul and spirit rejoiced with us on the shores of a lake, where so many centuries ago saintly men walked upon and founded the very bedrock of our faith.
We believe that this first voyage will be a blessing upon Your Papacy, since You chose to begin it with this pilgrimage to Nicaea. In the Orthodox Christian liturgical tradition, before a cleric participates in the sacred mystery of the Divine Eucharist he reads a prayer known as “Kairos” and venerates the icons of Christ and revered saints as a form of receiving their blessing to serve the Liturgy. Therefore, in our tradition, we would say, You came to take “Kairos,” strength and fortification from the sacred site of Nicaea as You begin your Papal ministry marked by the willingness to serve the Lord’s call towards Christian unity, which we find to be necessary more now than ever. It is our common responsibility to work for and be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).
With this in mind, we reiterate our joy in welcoming Your Holiness as a brother and renewing our sister Churches’ commitment to labor together for the proclamation of the Good News of salvation, bringing peace and reconciliation to the world.
We embrace You fraternally in Christ. Christ is in our midst!
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photo: Nikos Papachristou
