On January 31, 2020, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew received in audience a delegation from the Washington-based Museum of the Bible on the occasion of the signing of a co-operation agreement between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the US foundation.
During their meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Chief Curator, Dr. Jeff Kloha, and the Associate Curator of the Museum, Dr. Andy Niggemann, as well as the Professor at Tufts University, Elizabeth Prodromou, who is also member of Museum’s Consultative Board, informed the Ecumenical Patriarch about the activities and collaborations of the US foundation, which receives about one million visitors a year.
The Patriarchal Archivist, Archimandrite Agathangelos Siskos, also attended the meeting, who has been designated by the Ecumenical Patriarch as responsible for the cooperation with the Bible Museum. Immediately after the audience, Archimandrite Agathangelos, on behalf of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and Dr. Jeff Kloha, on behalf of the Bible Museum, signed the relevant cooperation pact, which aims to promote the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Now we see that this cooperation will soon bear fruit. Specifically, according to the response from Washington:
The Museum of the Bible, which conducted a routine search of the origins of a Greek liturgical manuscript of the four Gospels of the late 10th to early 11th centuries, discovered that it was one of the many objects looted from the Holy Patriarchal and Stavropegial Monastery of Eikosiphoinissa (also known as Kosinitza) in Northern Greece by Bulgarian soldiers during World War I.
Following this discovery, the museum contacted the Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, to coordinate its return.
The Ecumenical Patriarch thanked the museum and allowed to display the object until His visit to the United States in October 2021. In addition, the church will lend three additional sacred objects to the museum for exhibition.
“We would like to thank you for your diligent efforts to restore the legal heritage of the Holy Monastery of Theotokos Eikosiphoinissa,” said in a letter to the chief curator of the Museum of the Bible, Dr. Jeffrey Clocha. It is therefore a real blessing for the monastic community and for the Christian world to see the religious treasures that have been removed from the monastery, to be officially and ceremoniously returned to their rightful place and to be used once again for the spiritual building of the faithful but also for the scholars of history and art.”
Source: fanarion.blogspot.com
