One Year Since the Beginning of Vaccination in Greece (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

Indeed, a full year has passed since the day the vaccination started in Greece and I received the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine on December 27, 2020, as a representative of the Church of Greece, and some days later on the 21st of January 2021, I received the second dose, and glory to God I am until now in good health.

In the statements I made then and in a text I wrote I formulated the two reasons that led me to this decision.

The first reason was a thought that prevailed in me that, from our childhood and throughout our lives, we received many vaccinations, we took many medicines and so we survived so many years in life and we praise God for that. Also, we thank the scientists, who with the help of God kept us alive, to work for the glory of God and the Church, but also the good of society.

Synaxis of All the Holy Physicians

At the session of the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which took place on the 21st of July 2021, under the chairmanship Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, discussed and appreciated were the sacrificial and essential contribution of medical science and its healers in tackling the pandemic.

Therefore, it was decided to establish the feast of the "Synaxis of All the Holy Physicians" on the Sunday of each year closest to the 17th and 18th of October, when the Synaxis of the Holy Unmercennary Saints and the memory of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke the Physician are celebrated. On this day, the "Synaxis of the Holy Physicians", the Church will honor the full contribution of medical science and its healers to humanity.