His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel on Friday welcomed Pope Francis at the Conventus Hall of the Patriarchal Palace with the Paschal greeting: Christ is risen!
Meeting in the same room where their predecessors met 20 years ago,
Patriarch Daniel said that Pope John Paul II’s visit to Romania in 1999
was a sign of the joy of religious freedom following the communist
regime.
Conventus Hall, Palace of the Patriarchate, Friday, 31 May 2019
Your Holiness,
We welcome you with the paschal greeting Christ is Risen! in this hall of the Palace of the Patriarchate
where, on 8 May 1999, Pope John Paul II was received by Patriarch
Teoctist and several members of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox
Church. This hall is symbolically named in the Latin language Conventus, meaning Encounter.
Pope John Paul II, during his episcopacy in Poland, and Patriarch
Teoctist, as bishop in Romania, had a common spiritual experience,
namely, they experienced the difficult years of the Communist regime,
when the Church was marginalised and persecuted.
Therefore, their meeting in Bucharest, on 7-9 May 1999, was marked by
the joy of the religious freedom of Christians and amplified by the
feast of the Holy Pascha. Both Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Teoctist
were defenders of the Christian faith and felt in their activity the
help of the Crucified and Risen Jesus Christ.
In this sense, today, our predecessors call also upon us to defend
and promote the faith in Christ and the Christian values in a very
secular Europe, in order to convey to the younger generation the faith
in the merciful love of Christ for the world and the faith in the
eternal life of the human person. At the same time, they call us to bear
witness, defend and promote the traditional Christian family made up of
a man, a woman and children, in a Europe marked by a clear demographic
decline, a continent rapidly aging.
The preaching of the Gospel of Christ calls us today to unite the
Liturgy with philanthropy, prayer with social action in helping the
poor, sick and marginalised people.
At the same time, the Gospel of Christ calls us to promote justice,
reconciliation and solidarity in society so that the love of Christ for
the whole humankind may be perceived as being blessing, peace and joy,
for persons and peoples.
We wish you good health and many years of life: Ad multos annos!
† Daniel
Patriarch of Romania