Index   Back Top Print

[ EN  - ES  - FR  - PT ]

LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER
JOHN PAUL II 
TO GRÉGOIRE III, 
PATRIARCH OF ANTIOCH
FOR GREEK MELKITES
 

   

To His Beatitude Grégoire III 
Patriarch of Antioch for Greek Melkites

The happy announcement of the election of Your Beatitude to the Patriarchal See of Antioch for Greek Melkites is a cause of joy for me in the Lord. Thanks be to almighty God for this gift to his Church in the person of Your Beatitude as Pastor and guide of the beloved Greek Melkite community!

With my warm congratulations and the assurance of all my fraternal charity, Venerable Brother, I wholeheartedly accept your request for ecclesiastical communion, in conformity with the usage and desire of the whole Catholic Church. May the Lord help Your Beatitude throughout your new ministry, which I hope will be most fruitful, in union with our Brother Bishops, the Fathers of the Patriarchal Synod! Thus the saving Word will be ceaselessly proclaimed, lived and celebrated with love according to the ancient spiritual and liturgical traditions of the Greek Melkite Church, for the greatest consolation of the souls entrusted to your fatherly care, especially at the dawn of this third millennium, and for the good of the universal Church.

I assure Your Beatitude of my earnest and trusting prayers to the Father of mercy that, through the intercession of the All-Holy Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of all the saints, especially the countless numbers who have wondrously illumined the Christian East, your patriarchal mission will be filled with his most abundant gifts. Your Beatitude, I offer you and all the members of the Holy Synod a very fraternal embrace, as I impart my affectionate Apostolic Blessing to you and to everyone, the Bishops, priests, religious and lay people of your Patriarchate.

From the Vatican, 5 December 2000.

 

IOANNES PAULUS PP. II

 

© Copyright 2000 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana



Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana