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In a moving atmosphere, His Beatitude Theodoros II, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, officiated at the festive Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of St Nicholas in the place where St Nektarios lived, in Hamzawi, Cairo, close to today’s Khan Khalili.

There, decades ago, at a distance of just a few hundred meters from where thousands of tourists visit from all over the world, is preserved on the most historic places, both for the Ancient Patriarchate as well as for the community, the house where St Nektarios lived when he served the Alexandrian Church as Patriarchal Vicar of Cairo.

“It is a great blessing for Cairo and Alexandria that he lived among us. Despite the bitterness that the place he loved created for him, he came twice. He is the Saint we know in sadness and joy, but he was a great theologian, as he knew by heart both the Old and New Testaments and the Psalter. Forty of his works adorn the Library of the Patriarchal Vicariate of Cairo. And his great work is the verses for the All Holy Virgin “Agne Parthene” (O Virgin Pure) emphasized Theodoros of Alexandria, speaking of St Nektarios, expressing “enormous gratitude because he preserved the old apostolic Divine Liturgy of the Apostle St Mark, which was maintained by St Meletios Pegas and was conducted by Kyrillos of Alexandria in the Holy Monastery of St George Old Cairo”.

Patriarch Theodoros also commemorated today the late Patriarch Petros VII, who together with him and Makarios of Kenya drew up the apology to St Nektarios.

“We, the clergy of Africa, are children of St Nektarios, as every Hierarch of the Alexandrian Throne, every missionary Priest in Africa, is also a child of St Nektarios”, noted the Alexandrian Primate.

And Patriarch Theodoros, following the custom that wants only St Nektarios to be on the patriarchal Throne on this day, placed his icon there and in conclusion said:

“May he be our consolation for the 21st Century and as long as this world exists, for generations to come to praise, they will grow old, they will praise the Saint of hope, of consolation and of love, our own Saint. And his grace from Cairo, Aegina, to reach into all the hearts of people who hrt, because in our day, pain and sadness are in abundance.