I would like to express my great pleasure, my President, that you have prepared this beautiful event to inaugurate the exhibition of handicrafts. How can I begin to theologize, at the moment when my heart opens up emotionally, seeing this place, the Hagia Sophia, this street, this staircase I was climbing! How many memories! What difficulties! And yet, all I can say is: Thank God! I want you to know, my children, when I first learned about the Mission: From my spiritual father, Metropolitan Theodore of Lambi and Sfakia. He was taught too the feet of Augustine the Holy Elder. His house so humble in Heraklion! He was called by the elder Augustine the pedantic elder. He received great blessing near Father Augustine, they were classmates with Father Epiphanios Theodoropoulos and they envisioned a church that would revive the order of the high fathers of John Chrysostom and each would take on a domain. When I was a monk here at Agia Theodora in 1975, he became a Metropolitan and said to me, “My child, we are leaving for the Metropolis of Lambi and Sfakia.” The first thing we founded downstairs when we arrived in Spili is the Foreign Missionary Association. “Theodore, I want a struggling church”. I remember him telling me that the Church in prison triumphs and in the palace is humiliated. He said that economic dependence brings spiritual enslavement. And he knew about these people of Africa. So for the first time we were telling people that beyond Crete, beyond Greece, there is another continent, which is the continent of the future – I heard it for the first time then – Africa. How could I have known that one day God would have appointed me a humble father of this Africa! I am glad because you mentioned Fr. Chrysostomos Papasarantopoulos, the founder of your Fraternity, and I remember that the blessed Parthenius was the chief secretary of the Holy Synod and for the first time, he saw an Elder in the courtyard of the Patriarchate. He asked to see Patriarch Christopher. At first they didn’t pay much attention, but the Elder insisted, so they accepted him, they listened to him. He gets a blessing from Patriarch Christophoros and comes down and starts this great work. And when I am at his tomb, I kneel down, kiss the cross and say to him, “Elder Chrysostom, I thank you because you believed.” If he didn’t believe in what he was doing, it wouldn’t have come to fruition. So that’s how the story of the Mission begins. And timidly, little by little, the Patriarchate begins to see that besides the land of Egypt, there is another big, beautiful, thirsty world. And so the first missions begin to descend. So I thank God, then, that after my long tours in the Thebaid of the North, years and years on the frozen steppes, God willed and enlightened Patriarch Peter, who tells me that morning: “Come, Theodore, make the sign of the cross and you will depart as a bishop for Cameroon.” The only word I said – as if I could see him now – was “Blessed be, Your Beatitude”. And so begins my own journey in these French-speaking regions.
And I want to go back for a moment to those good times, when I was climbing those stairs to your Brotherhood. My only supplies were a small bag, my short hair, a small rosary. How many times I sat wearily, here in this corner, to see our doctor, the late Panagiotis Papadimitrakopoulos – God rest his soul – listening to me for hours! Today God claims me to come as Pope and Patriarch, but above all I come as a humble missionary. I will say a big, big, big, big thank you! Thank you for never finding the door closed. I needed it very much… So tonight I didn’t come here to have a nice ceremony, to say nice words. But I did come to say a big thank you, because after a few days I’m starting the big missionary tours again, to see my children again. I have sought their expressive eyes. I know they can spend hours waiting for me in the dust, greeting me with branches and dancing.
I also dance with them, because I have to show them that I respect their tradition, their customs and traditions, but above all I try to give them a pure water, which is called Orthodoxy. And Orthodoxy, they understand that we are not like other denominations, we have no money to offer them, there are few possibilities that we have, but everything is from our heart. I thank God because he has given me good high priests. I thank God for the hierarchy of my throne, they understand my anguish, they understand that the future for our Patriarchate is Africa. That is why I have also ordained African bishops, to show them that Africa is a part of both their own and our Patriarchate. We are now working with our own children, doing what each one can, to train them and to continue this great, great work called mission. God willed, and the Apostle Mark, when Barnabas sent him, saw Ethiopia, saw Libya, but he blessed from Alexandria to the very heart of Africa, to the horn of Good Hope. And this whole continent of the future is now a construction site. I want to congratulate you, but to bless our late doctor, who believed. If he hadn’t believed in this institution, nothing would have happened. And these people gave a lot because they had spiritual people around them who started this effort. The doctor would say to me, “You are in the front line, we are behind.” But it takes everybody. So I want to express the gratitude of our Patriarchate, of our Church. Thank you for not forgetting us and thank you for this honor of giving me this plaque. My Nostis, I know that you wrote this poem with much, much love and I call you today the poet of the mission. I would also like, my president, on behalf of our Patriarchate, to offer you the Lion of St. Mark the Apostle. A lion is his symbol, because his gospel is strong. This is the sermon of the Fathers, this sermon that came to rejoice the hearts of the people, and we have not ceased to be helped by people, fraternities who believed in the institution of preaching. So, take this lion of St. Mark, so that you may have lion’s health and continue to help us in our struggle!