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On 19 September 2018, His Beatitude Pope and Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria and All Africa arrived in Poland at the invitation of His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland to begin his official visit to the Polish Orthodox Church. On September 21, the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, the Primates issued a joint appeal to the heads of the Local Orthodox Churches and the plenitude of the holy Orthodoxy, expressing, in the spirit of brotherly love, their deep alarm over the recent developments pertaining to the situation of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. The text of the appeal is given below.

We, the Heads of two Local Churches – who meet on the Polish territory and are conscious for the responsibility for the life of the Holy Orthodoxy in the contemporary world, its peace, unity and maintaining the dogmatic and canonical order, facing the experience that the Orthodoxy in Ukraine lives nowadays – in the spirit of brotherly love, we appeal to all on whom depends the elimination of the church misunderstandings regarding the acquisition of autocephaly by the Ukrainian Church: please, do whatever is within your might to stave off the conflict concerning the question in order to install the church order on the Ukrainian territory.

Celebrating the Divine Liturgy on the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, we pray for the unity and peace of the Ukrainian nation. At the same time, we send our brotherly greetings to the Heads of the Local Orthodox Churches and the whole plenitude of the Holy Orthodoxy.

+Theodore

Pope and Patriarch

of Alexandria and All Africa

 +Sawa

Orthodox Metropolitan

of Warsaw and Poland

Warsaw – Bielsk Podlaski, 21.09.2018