On 21st August 2015, His Beatitude Theodoros II, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, conducted the festive Divine Liturgy at the Holy Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in the Solovski Islands, together with His Grace Meletios of Naucratis and His Grace Savva of Voskresenski, on the occasion of the commemoration of the founders of the above named monastery, the Holy Fathers Savatios, Zosimas and Germanos.
Prior to the dismissal of the Eucharistic Gathering, the Hegumen Archimandrite Porphyrios addressed His Beatitude warmly and gave him an icon of the Saints commemorated as well as a stone from the place where the New Martyrs of the Monastery were martyred.
The Patriarch then spoke and having thanked firstly the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow, Kyrill, for granting him the opportunity of visiting this place which is hallowed both by the ascetic labours and struggles of the great starets and ascetics, as well as by the martyred blood of the New Martyrs of Faith, he confided that he has been wishing for thirty years that he could make a pilgrimage to the Solovski Islands, from the time when as a young monk he read the biographies of the Thebaid of the North.
Following the usual monastic meal, His Beatitude departed for the Holy Monastery of Irkutsk in Siberia, traversing by air the entire Russian land, where he will have the opportunity of visiting the monasteries in that area.
