Alexandria, October 16, 2019
Photo: greekcitytimes.com
During its session last week, the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria resolved to begin commemorating the Pontian Greek genocide annually.
The proposal was put forth by His Eminence Metropolitan Ioannis of Zambia, who hails from Sebastia of Pontus, in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey, and the hierarchs decided to institute a commemoration of the 353,000 victims of the genocide every third Sunday in May, reports vimaorthodoxias.gr.
“May 19, 2019 was a day of historical memory with a special weight, given that it marked the 100th anniversary of the Pontian Genocide,” Met. Ioannis wrote in his proposal to Patriarch Theodoros and the hierarchs of the Holy Synod.
He also notes that in 1994 the Greek Parliament officially recognized the genocide of the 353,000 Pontians by the Turkish state and established May 19 as a day of remembrance.
The Greek genocide, including the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population carried out in Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) on the basis of their religion and ethnicity.
