Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew referred yesterday to the personality and work of the blessed Archbishop of Albania Anastasios, in his speech, during his visit to I. Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Bischwiller, where a trisage was held for the repose of the soul of the sleeping Primate.

According to a statement from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, His Holiness described the blessed Archbishop Anastasios, “a great personality of our Orthodox Church” and referred to his long, intense and fruitful ministry.

As stated in the announcement, the Ecumenical Patriarch said: “A great personality, as I said, because in the many years that God blessed him he accomplished a missionary work in Africa where he was a Missionary, a scientific one in Athens, where he taught Theology and Religion at the University of Athens, and ecclesiastical in Albania for thirty years and a little more, in Albania, where the Mother Church of of Constantinople, when the atheistic regime collapsed and he chose him as an educated, dynamic, worthy Hierarch to resurrect, to reborn from the ashes the Church of Albania, of which almost nothing was left. I was telling my colleagues that I remember those first years of the rebirth of the Church of Albania when Anastasios, the blessed one, had just been installed in Albania, brought us to Fanari two or three old priests, emaciated, exhausted by hardships and suffering . They were not allowed to function, they did other, manual, work in their homeland, they were escorted day and night by the police organs of the regime, and they received the blessing of the Mother Church, our Patriarchate, first Archbishop Anastasios, who was elected by our Synod and he appointed him there, and his associates, those few who remained. Of course, later, Anastasios ordained new priests, opened a priestly school, founded churches, orphanages, holy institutions, a hospital, a university, he did many things with the grace of God, with the good collaborators he chose, with the financial support of many institutions , of institutions and persons, who believed in his sincerity and industriousness and in his mission and did all these works which I mentioned Now the time has come for the Lord to call him to himself, to rest him from the many labors of his life and his ministry. He had been ill for the last time, he was consecrated to Evangelism in Athens, where he surrendered his spirit to our maker and God. His memory is eternal. May we have his wish.”