Final Thanks

So I truly feel the duty of thanking: the patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I; metropolitan delegate Ioannis of Pergamum, co-president of the international mixed commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches; without forgetting archdeacon John Chryssavghis and archimandrite Athenagoras, who this morning, on the solemnity of the Birth of the Mother of God, celebrated the divine liturgy.

A thank you to the patriarch of Moscow Cyril, to metropolitan German of Volgograd and Kamišin, who has kindly returned in our midst, to bishop Amvrosij of Gat?ina, head of the delegation, with father Porfirij of Solovki and father Aleksij Dikarev; to bishop Antonij of Boryspil’ of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, sent by metropolitan Volodymyr of Kiev, whom we greatly love and who is always in our prayers; to bishop Stefan of Homel’ and Zlobin, of the Belarusian Exarchate, representing metropolitan Filaret of Minsk.

I also thank the Churches that have sent their representatives or messages of fraternal participation: the bishops who have attended this conference and who have visited us, among them cardinal Roger Etchegaray; archbishop Antonio Mennini, apostolic nuncio in Great Britain; bishop Mansueto Bianchi of Pistoia, president of the Commission of the Italian Bishops’ Conference for ecumenism; mons. Andrea Palmieri, who is the new undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, whom we assure of our prayers for the great responsibility that he has assumed; metropolitan George of Mount Lebanon, who has honored us by returning among us, giving us his words of wisdom, reading the message of patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch, whose great suffering on account of the situation in Syria we know and to whom we are close with intercession to the Lord; bishop Andrej of Remesiana of the Serbian Patriarchate, auxiliary of patriarch Irinej and very dear to us, with whom we have ties of fraternal friendship and whom we encourage from the heart in his love for ecumenism and for dialogue; metropolitan Serafim of Germany, to whom we are much indebted for his faithfulness at our conferences, but also for all his care in his relations with our community and with the other Churches; bishop Ioannis of Thermopylae, punctually present in our conferences; Melchisedek, bishop of Pittsburgh, for who we pray heartily...