In the continuing course of his Apostolic Visit to the United States, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on Wednesday, September 24, 2025 presided over a Doxology Service at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in New York City. Later, he attended a blessing reception with Greek Orthodox faithful from Constantinople, Imvros and Tenedos, and their compatriots.
Accompanying His All-Holiness was His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, as well as His Eminence Theodoritos of Laodicea; His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos of Selyvria; His Eminence Metropolitan Gerasimos of San Francisco; the Very Rev. Grand Ecclesiarch Aetios, Director of the Private Patriarchal Office and other Hierarchs and clergy. Also in attendance were numerous Archons and faithful.
His All-Holiness, who was born in Imvros, has spoken movingly about these communities on numerous occasions. Referring in August 2025 to the small community of Greek Orthodox Christians in Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch stated: “We, the Orthodox Romioi, have never valued or based our existence on numbers, for our history teaches us that ‘the good is not in the many, but in the good the much is found’ and that God is able ‘from these stones to raise children to Abraham.’” (Matthew 3:9). He concluded: “Truly, in the history of humanity, nothing great or lofty has ever been achieved without love and sacrifice. And however few we may be today, all the more love and all the greater sacrifices are needed, so that we may preserve with dignity all that our forefathers and the ages have entrusted to us.”
In a 2021 address on Imvros, he said: “As your Patriarch and as your fellow citizen, I have never forgotten and especially never lost the way back to our beautiful place, to our island, Imbros, where the society of the living and the dead is always reborn. We have lived such a communion between heaven and earth today, as we do every time we remember our beloved ones who passed away.”
