The Moscow Patriarchate’s Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, His Eminence Hilarion, was the latest Orthodox hierarch to refer to this year’s bicentennial of the Greek War of Independence, speaking on Sunday after a prayer service for deliverance from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hilarion, who is also the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Church Relations, emphasized that “Greeks gave us our Orthodox faith… which is based on the Greek language and theology; the texts of the Divine Liturgy were written in Greek and translated into Slavic. Similarly, the chanting we hear during the Orthros and Vesper services, the celebrations and the Troparia (short hymns of one stanza) of the Great Lent were written in Greek.
“At least for this reason we must be grateful to the Greek people for the fact that they gave us the Holy Orthodox faith,” the Metropolitan said.
