The President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopios Pavlopoulos, hosts an official luncheon in honour of the president and members of the Standing Holy Synod.
In his address to the President of the Hellenic Republic, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece, as President of the Standing Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, thanked him for the invitation and for hosting the luncheon. “It is a way to show the strong ties between the two most important institutions in our country, that is the State and the Church,” he said.
Prokopios Pavlopoulos pointed out, “In recent years, our country and our people have proved that they remain steadfast in the Orthodox Faith and, therefore, committed to the principles of the Greek and European culture at a difficult time for refugees and immigrants. We have the right and the obligation to say that our neighbour, Turkey, must know that the Orthodox faith and the Greek and European civilisation give us, the Greeks, the courage to face human pain and to uphold Human Rights in accordance with the International and the European Law. Turkey must understand that we will not allow anyone to treat human lives intolerably. We will no longer allow Turkey to take actions that will lead to bloodshed as if we were at the beginning of the 20th century. Turkey will remain stigmatised for as long as it is unrepentant about its actions. It is like Turkey is harking back to those days.”
