On 31 May 2020, His Eminence Metropolitan Isaias of Tomasos and Oreini led a memorial service for the last Byzantine Emperor,Konstantinos XI Palaiologos,who died defending the Queen of Cities, Constantinople, from the Ottoman Turks on 29 May 1453.The service was held before a replica of an iconic statue of the heroic Emperor in the Metropolis compound, which includes the new Russian Church of St. Andrew that serves the many Russian expatriates in Cyprus.His Eminence said that:
As long as a Greek heart beats, the memory of the City's fall will be reborn in our souls.*
The Byzantine Empire, over its thousand year history, became a beacon of culture and the humanities,as well as an exponent of the Eastern Orthodox faith.It achieved this through a juxtoposition of classical Greek culture,Roman law and Christianity.They referred to themselves as "the Romaioi", the Romans, because they lived in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire - the half that ultimately survived until 1453 and,in certain respects, even until our own era.
As His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America reflected on 29 May:
What matters most is that the legacy of the Christian Roman Empire is incarnate in the sacred person of the Ecumenical Patriarch and the continuing diakonia (service) of the Great Church that continues to this day.*
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