The head of the Greek Archdiocese of the Church of Constantinople, Archbishop Elpidophoros (Lambriniadis), issued an encyclical for the feast of Saint Photios, Patriarch of Constantinople (historians associate the first attempts at the baptism of Rus with him). In the document, Elpidophoros compares the current head of the Phanar with Saint Photios, informs orthodoxtimes.

He “presided in love on the First Throne of Orthodoxy, and whose mission to bring the Faith of Christ to the world was one of the most ambitious and successful in history.” He added: “The Slavic Peoples are forever in debt to him for his vision, courage, and persistence to share the great Light of Christ with all the peoples who were sitting in darkness and in the regions of the shadow of death.”

Besides, the Phanar hierarch praised “the work carried out by the current Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, whom he described as a most worthy successor to the Saintly Photios and a “front-line defender of Orthodoxy,” like his holy predecessor, such as “restoring millions of pious Ukrainians to the fullness of Orthodoxy, by his bold and visionary granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine”.