At 4:00 in the afternoon, the Primate of the Roman Catholic Church, accompanied by the Cardinals, crossed the threshold of the Archdiocese of Athens, where he met with the Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece, Jerome. His Beatitude welcomed him and wished him good luck in the goals of his trip and the atmosphere of Greece to give him strength. For his part, Pope Francis expressed his joy for this meeting, while emphasizing that he remembers their first meeting in Lesvos.
The two Prelates, after talking in private for half an hour, then addressed and contradicted in the Throne Room of the Archdiocese. The Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece spoke about the theology of the Orthodox Church, which identifies death with sin, while Christ as the leader of life provides eternal life. He also spoke about immigration and how we embraced immigrants, while acknowledging the Pope’s great offer to refugees. However, he stressed that we must sound the alarm in the face of this great challenge.
In particular, as he stated, among other things, “” I’m really glad for your sensitivity to the refugee and immigration issue. I recognize your great contribution to the integration and reception of so many refugees in recent years. But at the same time, I feel the need to point out with you that we must sound the alarm in the face of this great challenge. If the world community, the leaders of powerful states, international organizations do not take bold decisions, the ever-threatening presence of vulnerable refugee women and children will continue to grow worldwide. The self-evident rights in education, religious freedom, equality, will continue to be undermined. Enough with the beautiful words. “Our fellow human beings in Afghanistan will be forced to leave and be instrumentalized by neighboring countries with practices such as Turkey.”
In his rebuttal, the Pope began his speech, absolutely theological, with the phrase of the Apostle Paul “grace and peace from God”, which the Apostle Paul addressed to the faithful of Rome, while he was on Greek soil.
He then referred to “our common roots, which have crossed the centuries. The apostolic ones. ” “They are underground, hidden, often neglected, but they exist and support everything,” he said. He then apologized for the mistakes of so many Catholics, for actions and choices arising – as he said – rather from the thirst for profit and power, “they withered the society between us”, he added. In fact, he pointed out that he shamefully acknowledges the above and feels “the need to renew the apology from God and from the brothers.”
Moreover, his reference to the Holy Spirit was impressive, which, as he stressed, “calls us today more than in the past to heal the wounds of humanity with the oil of love.”
And he continued: “Christ himself asked his own people, in the hour of distress, for consolation, saying to stay with him and to pray. The image of the oil thus leads us to the Garden of Olives. “Stay here and hurry” (Mark 14:24), Jesus said. His request to the Apostles was made in the plural. And today he wants us to be vigilant and pray: in order to bring God the consolation of the world and to heal our wounded relationships, we need the prayer of those in their favor. It is necessary to reach ” the necessary cleansing of historical memory. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, the disciples of the Lord, inspired by love, by the courage of truth, and by the sincere will to forgive one another and to be reconciled, are called to reconsider together their painful past and those wounds that this unfortunately continues to cause even today ” (‘Agios Ioannis-Pavlos the 2nd Encyclical.’ ‘Ίνα πάντες εν ώσιν’ ‘) “.
In addition, he spoke of immigrants, who “can not be left indifferent and considered only as a burden to lift or, even worse, to pass it on to someone else.” The meeting was attended by, among others, the metropolitans of Messinia Chrysostomos, Demitriados Ignatios, Nea Ionia and Philadelphia Gabriel, Fanariou Agathangelos and Bishop Philotheos of Oreon, as well as the first consul of the Archdiocese Archimandrite Archbishop
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