CONDOLENCES NOTE OF THE PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GLAFKOS CLERIDES

(Jerusalem, 17 November 2013).

Your Excellency,

With great sorrow, yet with equal sorrow in Christ who has vanquished death by the cross, we communicate through this Patriarchal Letter of Ours with Your esteemed and distinguished Excellency in order to offer our condolences to You and Your respectable government as well as to the entire afflicted people of Cyprus, on the demise of the former President of the Republic of Cyprus, the ever-memorable Glafkos Clerides.

The former President, who departed full of days, is recognized the world over as a fighting Greek Cypriot patriot, a skilled and perceptive political leader, the man who initiated the accession of the Republic of Cyprus into the European Union, uncompromisingly working for its reunion, and offering in deed his support to our long spoken of Patriarch of Jerusalem.

We share the grief of the people of Cyprus on the death of this esteemed and popular President, praying from the All-Holy and Life-Giving Sepulcher that God our Lord rest his soul in the land of the living, and that Your Excellency be enhanced to successfully complete Your struggle towards a just resolution of the political problem facing the martyric Great Island of Cyprus.

In the Holy City of Jerusalem, the 17^th of November.

Of Your Honoured Excellency,

Fervently Praying to the Lord,

THEOPHILOS III

Patriarch of Jerusalem