Dear Brother Archons and Friends of the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,

On this Thanksgiving Day, our thoughts are focused on Nicaea, The Ecumenical Patriarchate and His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. During these days, 5,500 miles east of New York, the spiritual fathers of the Ancient Pentarchy gather in Constantinople-New Rome during the commemoration of 1700th Anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council, where the tenets of Christianity were codified and proclaimed. Indeed, this Thanksgiving Day 2025 we have so much for which to be grateful.

We have had the incalculable blessing of another year of the extraordinary worldwide ministry of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who is now in his historic 34th year as Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch. His All-Holiness is the longest-serving and most consequential Ecumenical Patriarch in the long and illustrious history of our Holy Church, and we are supremely blessed to continue to enjoy the fruits of his sacred ministry. Eis polla eti, Despota!

We likewise thank God for the inspiring spiritual leadership of His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros here in America. The day after Thanksgiving, Friday, November 28, is His Eminence’s birthday, and as we celebrate that milestone with him, we are grateful to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the inexpressible gift of His Eminence’s diakonia in our country. Eis polla eti, Despota!

We are also thankful for the sacred ministry of Their Eminences the Metropolitans of the Eparchial Synod, and of our Spiritual Advisor, the Rev. Protopresbyter Alex Karloutsos, whom His All-Holiness has just elevated to the rank of Grand Protopresbyter of the Holy and Great Church of Christ. Axios! Thanks are also due as always to our beloved Presbytera Xanthi, who bestows upon all our Archon initiatives a touch of grace and elegance. As a PK (priest’s kid), I am especially grateful for our beloved parish priests throughout the Archdiocese who selflessly minister to the needs of their flocks, while serving as husbands, fathers and grandfathers to their own beloved families… side-by-side with their devoted presbyteres…not so easy…but so deserving of our profound gratitude.

As we thank God for His many blessings, let us not fail to remember those who are walking the way of the Cross. We remain in prayer for our Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Christians of Turkey, Ukraine, Nigeria, as well as for all those around the world who are suffering from persecution as Christians, and from the deprivation of their God-given freedom of religion. Let us resolve to redouble our efforts in the coming year to do all that we possibly can as Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to protect the future of faith. May all Christians everywhere in the world enjoy the same freedom of religion we are blessed and grateful to experience in the United States.

I wish above all to express my utmost gratitude to our Lord and His All-Holy Mother for our beloved wives and families. My beloved Maria, our three adult children and five grandchildren are the greatest of all blessings and together, as a family we look forward to another year serving as instruments of our Heavenly Father to do good works. We are truly the Archon Family, and for that, I offer profound Thanksgiving.

May you and your own beloved families enjoy a deeply blessed Thanksgiving Day, and a most joyous Feastday of Saint Andrew the First-Called Apostle, the patronal saint of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and of the Archons, this Sunday on November 30.

In the joyful and grateful service of the Holy and Great Mother Church,