TIRANA, Jan 30 /ATA/ – Prime Minister Edi Rama shared a photo gallery as Albania bid farewell to the long-serving head of Albania’s Orthodox Church, Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana, Durres and All Albania.
In a post on the social media, the government head said that today was a “day of mourning at the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, where the final farewell was bidden to the Archbishop of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania.”
PM Rama delivered a speech in tribute to the late Archbishop Anastasios and his contribution to Albania over decades.
The Premier highlighted the Archbishop’s role in uniting the Orthodox community and fostering closer ties between Albania and Greece.
“As the hierarch of a historically significant social community, with great influence in the national mosaic of Albania, the person of Archbishop Anastasios and his work at the helm of the Church and its flock have been scrutinized, admired, blessed, criticized, and even anathematized,” Rama said.
“This alone testifies to the stoicism of the shepherd a quality increasingly rare in an era and a world where more and more people waver with the wind, and fewer and fewer allow the “Holy Spirit to blow where it wills” (John III, 8),” he added.
The government head underlined that presence of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the delegation accompanying him conveyed the profound message of indivisibility in life and in mourning between our two nations.
“I am certain that my friend, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who honors us today with his presence and that of his esteemed delegation, entirely shares this opinion and by being present here today the prime minister not only pays tribute to the epochal figure of the Archbishop but also honors the Autocephalous Church of Albania and the state in which it now breathes freely, sending a profound message of indivisibility in life and in mourning between our two nations and peoples,” Rama stated.
/r.e/a.f/u.sh/
