The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, this week again reiterated the determination of Hellenism and Orthodoxy not to abandon, but to preserve, its covenant and its natural and historic cradle, speaking on Thursday during the Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, at the celebrating Church of Panagia of Pera, in the Bosporus metropolis’ same-name district, known as Beyoğlu in Turkish.
The Ecumenical Patriarch said, “… We will remained on these Blessed Lands, because here is the Polis of the All-Blessed Mother of God, the Polis of our Fathers, the all-venerable center of Orthodoxy. We continue here because we were born here; because this is our homeland, everything here is familiar and intimate to us… We persist because this is where our history is located; the present and our future; the footprints and scents of our civilization, as we are not foreigners here… We stay and struggle, because this is our irreversible decision, as we yearn to guard the Thermopylae.”
photos:Nikos Magginas