Athonite Elders, representatives of the semi-autonomous monastic community’s 20 monasteries, anchorite monks and hundreds of pious pilgrims greeted the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, during his arrival on Saturday afternoon at the Holy Monastery of Xenophontos, on the northern Greece promontory that serves as Orthodoxy’s most important center of monasticism.
The Patriarch was officially welcomed by the four-member executive committee of Mt. Athos, the Holy Administration, led by the committee head, the “Protepistates”, the Elder Symeon Dionysiates.
