“We will open our arms and welcome the orphaned children from Ukraine,” stated Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece during the service of the First Stasis of Salutations to the Most Holy Theotokos at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens.
The Archbishop noted that today is an opportunity for each one of us to “leave behind our thoughts, our pains, our problems, our personal, our familial and our social issues, our difficulties with which we have been struggling lately”.
Referring to the war in Ukraine, the Archbishop stressed that this was a terrible explosion, not of a war between opponents, but of a war between fellow Orthodox Christians.
He called on the faithful to make a special request to the Virgin Mary along with our own problems to give her blessing to stop the atrocities between the two countries and not to allow us to deal with such problems.
At the same time, the Archbishop, describing the situation in Ukraine, where people see their homes being torn down and their need leads them to leave, pointed out that on the one hand we must shield ourselves, to avoid such a difficult situation, and on the other hand if need be, to stand by them.
He also referred to the constant communication he has with Metropolitan Epifaniy of Kyiv and All Ukraine and the fact that he expressed to him the undying support of the Church of Greece to the suffering Orthodox people of Ukraine and pointed out:
“I told him that all the children in orphanages, institutions, children who have no parents, who are being supported and taken care of by the Church, we Orthodox Greeks, will open our arms and welcome them.”
He also asked the faithful “to pray tonight for them too and to pray to God not to give us such trials.”
