Memorial prayer “for the blessed memory and eternal rest” of the souls of the victims of the train accident in Tempe, among whom are students of AUTH, was held in the morning in the Holy Church of School of Theology of the AUTH, after the end of the Divine Liturgy.

The ceremony, where the priests remembered the names of the victims, was attended by their relatives, friends and members of the AUTH university community.

After the end of the memorial service, the rector of AUTH, Professor Charalambos Feidas spoke about a difficult day for Aristotle’s family. “Fifty-seven of our fellow citizens lost their lives unjustly in the Tempe train accident. All of us and especially their families and friends met that day with the unthinkable. Among these 57 people there were several students from the university institutions of our city, most of them from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, which paid a heavy blood tax in this accident,” he said. He pointed out that “it is the State’s obligation to render justice” and “it is a reminder for us to remember them, to honor their memory and to try not to let this happen again in the future.

“For a difficult day, very hard”, spoke the dean of the Theological School of AUTH, Chrysostomos Stamoulis, because “we are experiencing from a distance – certainly not as the relatives of the victims experience – this tragedy of the Tempe accident”.

“I wish – and the whole Theological School wished liturgically today, a good rest to these children and to all the people, who were on this train and perished. Good strength to their relatives, to keep hope, even when it leaves them. And of course we expect not only the resurrection of people, but also the resurrection of justice, so that a similar phenomenon does not happen again. It is not a punitive mood for the resurrection of justice, but it is a mood that should catch up with what we usually don’t catch,” he stressed.