His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople visited Poland during Bright Week 2019, exercising his ministry in the light of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.On 2 May, Patriarch Bartholomew led the March of the Living,a three kilometer walk between Birkenau and the Auschwitz Museum in Poland,sites of Nazi atrocities against Jews,Poles and other groups despised by Adolph Hitler.Along with His All-Holiness, Speaker of the Greek Parliament Nikolaos Voutsis, Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila,US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman,His Eminence Metropolitan Emmanuel of France and other dignitaries preceded several Jewish and Polish youth groups on the Holocaust Remembrance Day event, also called "Reflect and Learn".*
Patriarch Bartholomew addressed a crowd of 10,000, observing that the names of these concentration camps:
encapsulate what humankind when motivated by pure hatred, can do to desacralise and deface the dignity of the human person,who is created in the image of God.*
On 3 May, Patriarch Bartholomew was received by His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland.After a doxology service,a service of thanksgiving in the university chapel of Sts.Cyril and Methodius,His Beatitude thanked God for the opportunity to meet with Patriarch Bartholomew and wished him a fruitful journey.
For his part, His All-Holiness characterised the state of relations between their two Churches as being excellent.
Then the two spiritual leaders proceeded to the new Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, the cornerstone of which Patriarch Bartholomew had laid in 2015.
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