Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden sent an encyclical to the faithful for National Holiday of March 25, 1821.
As the Metropolitan points out, the Greeks rose up “for the sacred faith of Christ and the liberty of the homeland.”
“Clergy and laity, rich and poor, men and women, educated and semi-literate all united under the standard of the revolution bearing the cross, and gave themselves over to the struggle with all their might, so that we might today enjoy our many freedoms,” Metropolitan Cleopas points out.
He recalls the words of the poet Costis Palamas, “Don’t forget that everything you are, you owe not only to your hands exclusively. You also owe it to all those who came and went before you, and will come and go after you. The unborn and the dead will judge us.”
“For us Hellenes of Scandinavia, the northernmost part of Europe, let us look to the legendary Lady of Ro. A woman from a small and uninhabited island, who raised the Greek flag each day for 40 years, as a contemporary example.
It is this very flag, which flies high on the mast of our hearts, that we too are obliged to fly high here in Scandinavia, learning, preserving, and teaching our people’s language, traditions, customs, and values, as well as our religion and culture, worthily living out our history.”