BOSTON – Joe Biden, presidential candidate and former U.S. Vice President during the Barack Obama administration, phoned His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and expressed his warm wishes on his 80th birthday, which was on February 29.
Biden has shown interest about the issues facing the Ecumenical Patriarchate regarding its smooth operation and fulfilment of its sacred mission worldwide, religious freedom, and most especially the reopening of the historic Theological School of Halki.
Biden has much admiration and respect for His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew, who according to the ecclesiastical order “has the care of all the Churches.”
Biden also follows very closely the initiatives of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew regarding the guarding and sustenance of the sacredness of the Creation of God and the Protection of the Natural Environment, the Inter-Christian and Interfaith Dialogues aiming for peace, cooperation, and coexistence between the nations and people around the world.
It is noted here that Biden as Vice President had visited Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Phanar in November of 2014 during an official visit to Turkey. That meeting had lasted for one and a half hours.
thenationalherald.com