LAST UPDATED 15:08
Archbishop Makarios of Australia could not contain his emotion and cried in front of numerous people who were watching him.
The incident took place on Monday night inside the church of Axion Esti, in Northcote, Melbourne, during the speech of the Archbishop on “The role of the Church during the Battle of Crete 1941 – 1945”, as reported by the Greek newspaper “Neos Kosmos”.
The event was organized by the Cretan Federation of Australia and New Zealand and the Cretan clubs of Melbourne as part of the festivities for the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Crete.
Archbishop Makarios was moved as in the context of his speech he began to tell the story of a Cretan woman who was seen lighting the candles of the German tombs in Maleme, as she had emphasized, “my child was killed by the Germans and I can’t light his candle. Let me light the candles of these children because their mothers cannot come here.”
In the face of the Archbishop’s emotion and tears, the audience stood up and began to applaud him and shout “Axios”.
The meeting of the Archbishop of Australia with the brother of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Nikos Archontonis, and his wife, Katie, who live permanently in Melbourne, was also touching.
Particularly, Archbishop Makarios during his speech, after a brief review of the historical events that evidence the Church’s timeless contribution to the struggles of the Greek nation, focused on the events of May 1941, first mentioning the Metropolitan of Crete Vassilios Markakis and the episcopes of the island, who called on the people to defend their freedom. He even made a special mention of the important role of Metropolitan Vassilios, as well as his successor, General Hierarchical Commissioner of the Diocese and later Archbishop Eugenios of Crete, while he pointed out that with the same courage and the same spirit of self-sacrifice and self-sacrifice Church of Crete, paying the price with imprisonment and executions.
The Archbishop of Australia presented by name some of these most heroic figures of national martyrs, saying that numerous clergy hid and protected the soldiers of the allies. With emotion, he referred to Priest Vassilios Roumeliotakis, who during the Battle of Crete, and later, helped many ANZACs fighters, but his main task was to keep a record of the dead soldiers who were buried in the “Eleones” area. along with their military IDs. After the end of the war, the relatives managed to find the exact places where the dead were buried.
“The heroic activity of this enlightened clergy was not limited to the Greeks and their allies, but to all as our Lord Jesus Christ has said, ” Love your neighbor as yourself”.
He also buried German prisoners, proving that “Orthodoxy does not distinguish between Greeks and non-Greeks, friends and enemies.”
Having documented the national action of the representatives of the Church in the mainland of Crete, as well as the rest of Greece, the Archbishop concluded that even though some people doubt the offer of the church and priests on the wars the Greek people asks and accepts the protection of the ecclesiastical representatives”.
“Invisible heroes, of every city, every small village of Hellenism”, he continued, “from the dark years of Ottoman rule until the German occupation, stood by the flock with self-denial and took the responsibility of protecting them with their own lives. Similarly, for the Battle of Crete, our priests, Cretan priests, and monks, bravely gave their fight for the freedom and dignity of our people”.
Before concluding his speech, the Archbishop presented the shocking confession of the famous German writer Erhart Kestner, who had visited the mainland in 1952 and, on his way to the German cemetery, met a black-clad woman lighting candles on the graves of German soldiers.
This woman had lost her husband during the Battle of Crete, while her only son had been taken hostage in 1943 and had died in a concentration camp in Sachsenhausen.
When Kestner asked her why she lit candles on the graves of people who killed her compatriots, she said: “I light a candle in their memory because their own mothers cannot come here. I believe that another grieving mother will light the candle in the grave of my child, wherever he is buried”. “This fact best expresses the universality and the ethos of our Crete”, Archbishop Makarios stressed with emotion, pointing out that this is a valuable treasure, which “we must all preserve and transmit to the next generations ”.