ADDRESS OF H.B. PATRIARCH OF JERUSALEM TO H.E. LEO ARCHBISHOP OF KARELIA AND ALL FINLAND AT THE MEAL HOSTED AT THE DAVID CITADEL HOTEL.

May 4, 2014

Your Eminence Archbishop Leo of Karelia and all Finland,

beloved brother and concelebrant in Christ,

The official visit of Your most beloved and profound Eminence and your honorable delegation to Our Church of Jerusalem and its holy shrines personally granted to Us great joy and deep exultation, as well as to Our Holy and Sacred Synod, to the venerable Brotherhood of the All-Holy Tomb, and to the clergy and people.

Your Eminence, during these days of Your official visit while being accompanied by Our Representation, You visited almost all of the All-Holy Shrines and received the grace residing within them of our incarnated, crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, and you blessed the Hagiotafites Fathers who are serving there, as well as the clergy and people. Just the other day, we completed our Christian communion and we sealed Your pilgrimage theoria (i.e. contemplation) with our concelebration at the All-Holy Tomb, and where we received the holy Body and Blood of Christ.

Thanking God for all the gifts He has given to Us, we now thank, according to Our communion at this common meal, offered by our Brotherhood of the All-Holy Tomb in honor of the entire Orthodox Church of Finland, in honor of Your Eminence and your honorable delegation, which under the wise pastoral guidance exercises considerable good pastoral, social, inter-Christian and interreligious work in the advanced country of Finland.

We raise our glass for the health, firmness and strength of Your Eminence, and that you may continue to execute this most honorable ecclesiastic diakonia for the progress and salvation of the flock entrusted to Your Eminence and for the prosperity and progress of the entire Finnish people. Amen.

His Beatitude

THEOPHILOS III

Patriarch of Jerusalem