Amphilochios Tsoukos: A Modern Missionary
I had the great blessing and joy of visiting the missionary outpost in the Fiji Islands of the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 2023, along with two remarkable friends, devotees of Foreign Mission, Prodromos Kalaitzidis and the ophthalmologist Aikaterini Alexandrou.
A missionary outpost founded by the now blessed Amphilochios Tsoukos, Metropolitan of New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga).
It is about him that I wish to speak, about him that I wish to write a few simple words.
I was fortunate enough to meet him here in Greece. A modern Saint, a Saint of Mission, because he dedicated most of his life to Foreign Mission. With deep faith in God and boundless trust in Him, he created an enormous body of work.
Everyone in the Fiji Islands speaks of him. Everywhere you see his signature, his presence. All our Orthodox Fijian brethren speak of him and shared with us events they experienced alongside him. For them, he was:
An Orthodox Christian hierarch of great simplicity, humility, and boundless sacrificial love, who approached them from the very first moment he was among them. He embraced them, loved them, grieved for their poverty—but primarily for their spiritual poverty—and wished for this poverty to transform into happiness, joy, and hope.
He became one with them, sharing their joy and their pain. He catechized them, baptized them, married them, buried them. His food was humble, like theirs. He walked barefoot like them. He lived with very few possessions. He embraced them as they were, helping everyone without discrimination with the meager income he had available. Nothing for himself. He built churches for them, ordained priests, created youth choirs, teaching them to chant Athonite Byzantine melodies in Greek. He gathered orphaned, poor, abandoned children and placed them in a boarding school. He founded a Monastery. He taught them liturgical matters.
To my question to Fr. Bartholomew: “Father, how are you such a perfect celebrant? What is the reason for this?” his answer was: “I owe everything to the blessed Amphilochios.” The Fijian Orthodox owe him everything.
Fr. Alexios, a spiritual child of the blessed Fr. Barnabas, told us: “Whatever I am, I owe to my spiritual father, Fr. Barnabas.” Fr. Barnabas, a former Hindu, was nurtured in Orthodoxy by the blessed Amphilochios, whose spiritual child he was. When he met him, he said: “This man has moved me so much; he must be a man of the true God. I too will become Orthodox.” And he did; he was ordained a priest, lived a holy life, and performed miracles during his lifetime. He will be the first Orthodox Fijian saint, because Fr. Amphilochios imparted to him holiness, the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Experiences unprecedented for our standards here. The blessed Amphilochios, with his deep faith and great trust in God, managed to make the impossible possible, the difficult easy, under very challenging conditions.
Thus, Orthodoxy reached the middle of the Pacific, thanks to that enlightener. He dedicated time, effort, hardship; many times he experienced rejection, was in danger, with his prayer rope in hand and with prayer in his heart, unceasing prayer, he planted Orthodoxy so that souls might be saved and become citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, to enjoy all that he tasted.
A Modern Saint Missionary.
May we have his blessing.
May his memory be eternal.
Angeliki Kafantari – Arnaouti
Regular member of the Fraternity
