Letter of thanks received from the Church of Greece
In a letter dated September 3, 2007, His Beatitude, Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece, expressed his gratitude to His Beatitude, Metropolitan Herman for the letter sent on behalf of the Orthodox Church in America in support of those suffering and struggling with the fires that devastated much of southern Greece earlier this summer.
The text of the letter reads as follows.
“Your kind and comforting letter, sent on the occasion of the disastrous fires that have swept a great part of our country, comes at a time that we, too, receive this dreadful news from afar, awaiting hospitalization, 9,407 km away from our archdiocese.
“World-wide response has been enormous, either ethical or practical or both. What counts most, however, is the ceaseless prayer from every pious and God-loving creature to heaven for the remedy of the souls and the reforestation of the land.
“To these, your holy prayers and those of your flock are added and constitute a ladder of incense to the Almighty. May He be receptive of these prayers and grant our people salvation.