The “National Youth Assembly” successfully carried out online
Today, Monday, January 4, the “National Youth Assembly” of the Church of Greece was conducted online with the participation of young men and women from all the Holy Metropolitanates of the Church of Greece. They had the opportunity to study the first state acts of the modern Greek state and to express their views on them, assisted by coordinators, in a debate marked by its interdisciplinary and theme-based approach.
The Conference was declared opened by HB Ieronymos II, Archbishop of Athens and all Greece, with a message he personally addressed to the youth of our Church online, in which he stated, among others:
“Today you take the floor in order to revive the first attempt of the Greeks at a political constitution. You will talk about that time, when, in the name of the Holy Trinity, the Greeks articulated their freedom into a Declaration and organized their first collective structures through a Constitution as a prototype of a state entity. A prototype which today has evolved into armored rule of law with international prestige and cultural power”.
Subsequently, the Most Rev. Metropolitan Ignatios of Demetrias and Almyros, Chairman of the Special Synodic Committee of Cultural Identity, addressed a greeting to the participants of the National Assembly, making special reference to the topical subject of the Conference in view of the problematics of the relations between Church and state.
Then, the participants were connected with five distinct links, depending on the working group they belonged to. More specifically, there were five Metropolitan Centres operating in Athens, Thessaloniki, Nafplion, Corfu and Volos, coordinated, respectively by Mr Constantinos Holevas and Mr Panayiotis Haradzopoulos, the Archimandrites Father Iakovos Athanassiou and Father Constantinos Kotsiopoulos, the Protopresbyters Father Petros Athanassopoulos and Father Gheorghios Tassias, Protopresbyter Father Themistocles Mourtzanos and, finally, Archimandrite Father Epiphanios Economou.
The members of the National Assembly convened with the assistance of the coordinators and developed their views regarding the ideals of the Fighters of 1821, their personalities, their visions, on the basis of historic evidence and the main points of the Declaration and the Constitution of Epidaurus.
During the session of the members of the National Youth Assembly the viewers also had the opportunity to watch a discussion between the Very Rev. Archimandrite Father Bartholomaios Antoniou-Triantaphyllides, Secretary of the Special Synodic Committee of Cultural Identity, the Learned Prof. Emmanuel Varvounis of the Democritean University of Thrace and President of the Scholarly Committee of the Special Synodic Committee of Cultural Identity, and Archim. Father Issidoros Katsos, Doctor of Law and Theology. The three discussants commented on the commencement of the 261 Synodic and peripheral events organized by the Church of Greece, theological, historical and legal aspects of the “Provisional Mode of Governance of Greece” and the deeper messages included in the interventions of speakers such as Mr Prokopios Pavlopoulos, former President of the Hellenic Republic, or Ms Anna Psarouda-Benaki, Member of the Academy of Athens, during their participation in the 10 International Scholarly Conferences of the Church of Greece for the 200 years since the Revolution.
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After the end of this discussion and of the proceedings of the five Metropolitan Centres of the International Youth Assembly, the Plenary of the Conference convened. In the course of the plenary session the Conclusions were stated and a “Declaration of the National Youth Assembly” was read out, as quoted here in the Appendix.
The workings of the Conference were declared closed by the Secretary of the Special Synodic Committee of Cultural Identity, Very Rev. Archimandrite Father Bartholomaios Antoniou-Triantaphyllides, who expressed his thanks to the Chief Secretary of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, Bishop Philotheos of Oraioi, and the Director General of the Financial Services of the Church of Greece, Very Rev. Archimandrite Father Nikodemos Pharmakis. He also thanked all the coordinators and all the members of the Metropolitan Centres as well as the working group of the Holy Synod. Finally, he wished that God may give strength to all the Greek men and women so that we may overcome the present adversities and be able to render the due honour to the Neomartyrs, Chieftains, clergymen, lay people, the men, women and children who shed their blood in the War of the 1821 Revolution, a national and sacred war for freedom and for the self-determination of the Greeks as Orthodox.
The proceedings of the Conference were broadcast live on the Internet site www.ekklisia1821.gr.
Appendix | The Declaration of the 2021 National Youth Assembly
