Your Holiness,

We are communicating with You on the occasion of Your invitation, which You had addressed to us for the purpose of sending a "brotherly emissary" from our Church who will participate in the special Convention of Bishops of Your Church, which is to take place in Rome from the 28th of November to the 14th of December 1991, on the subject of "Re-evangelizing Europe".

In its Meeting on the 2nd of October this year, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece decided, upon carefully studying the matter, that our Church cannot participate in the aforementioned Convention of Bishops for reasons of conscience.  The Holy Synod was obliged to take seriously into account the fact that despite the repeated requests -which were addressed to Your Holiness by us but also by other leaders of Orthodox Autocephalous Churches- the aggressive fanaticism of the Uniates in Central and Eastern Europe continues to manifest itself relentlessly, thus creating an obvious antithesis between the things that Rome has officially proclaimed and the things that it is actually doing, or chooses not to do.

Our sister Orthodox Churches in Russia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland have suffered and are continuing to suffer, with an ever-increasing rate, on account of plainly evident proselytizing activities, of  intolerance, and frequently on account of the violence inflicted by the Catholics of the eastern rite who are devoted to Rome.  All this, along with the truly inexplicable silence on Your part during the recent demonstrations by a group of fanatic Turks when they besieged the Venerable Center of Orthodoxy -the Ecumenical Patriarchate- has disillusioned and discouraged our Church and has created serious doubts as to the veracity of everything that has been announced repeatedly, in innumerable opportunities and in countless Ecumenical events, with regard to the sincere desire for a rapprochement between the Churches.

Therefore the Church of Greece, by taking a stance of solidarity towards Her Orthodox sister-Church, will not be participating in the forthcoming Convention of the Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops, with the conviction that this absence will be infinitely more eloquent than whatever could be expounded by Her "brotherly emissary" in five minutes.

With brotherly greetings

† The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Seraphim

Translation:  A.N.