On June 6th 2023 His Beatitude Theodoros II Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa received in the Patriarchal Office the participants in the deliberations of the international Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, taking place in the Great City, representatives of the Autocephalous Church of Poland, Eminent Professors, Jerzy Ostapczuk and Jersy Betlejko, to whom he handed over a Patriarchal medallion, to be presented on his behalf to His Beatitude Savva, Metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland.
Addressing the Professors, His Beatitude the Pope and Patriarch, after expressing paternal thanks to them for their beneficial participation in the deliberations of the Joint Theological Committee, expressed his love and respect for the venerable Primate of the Polish Orthodox Church, who this year celebrates the eighty-fifth year of his life, as well as the twenty-fifth year of His Primate ministry.
“I respect and honor His Beatitude Metropolitan Mr. Savva as a wise ecclesiastical man, but also as a competent helmsman of the Church of Poland. Knowing well that the virtues of justice, faith, sincerity and sacrificial love for the Church are among the principles that adorn His personality, I am convinced that His Primate’s heart sympathizes and suffers with us, because of the emerging obstacles to our missionary work and all kinds of injustices and unbrotherly behaviours, which we undergoing in long-suffering Africa, on the continent on which the future of the world will definitively be decided, according to the words of my enlightened and most experienced spiritual Father and Predecessor, the venerable Patriarch Parthenios III of Alexandria.
I am sure that on this honorable anniversary, His Beatitude of Poland will rightly define the word of Truth, condemning every concept of violent, vindictive, unjust and illegal act against the Second Throne Supreme Church of Alexandria and its faithful flock, which thirsts only for Christ Crucified, but ultimately always Risen and Victorious”.
