Address during the resplendent celebration of the memory of the Three Hierarchs at the Phanar
The memory of the Three Hierarchs and “Guardians of the Letters” was honored at the Holy Center of the First-Throned Orthodox Church of Constantinople today, Thursday, January 30. In his address, the Ecumenical Patriarch emphasized the importance of preserving as “the apple of the eye” the spiritual heritage of the Nation (Genous), which is “a bulwark against the corrosive tendencies of modern civilization to man and freedom,” and to transmit it to the new generation, which “is today a ‘neglected youth’ (John Chrysostom, PG 58, 504) and ‘neglecting’ its spiritual destination.”