New York, February 12, 2020
Photo: oca.org
The primate of the Orthodox Church in America and the primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America will join forces to feed those in need in March.
His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon (OCA) and His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros (GOARCH) met at the GOARCH headquarters in New York on Monday, February 10, “in an ongoing effort to strengthen the relationship between the Archdiocese and the Orthodox Church in America,” reports the OCA press service.
The result of the meeting is that the hierarchs will come together on March 31 to serve food to those in need as part of the “Feed the Hungry” program of the Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society, GOARCH’s philanthropic arm, of which Abp. Elpidophoros is the chairman.
They also discussed the possibility of concelebrating the Divine Liturgy, which they have not done since Abp. Elpidophoros was enthroned as primate of GOARCH last year.
They also “committed to blessing and encouraging the boards of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology and St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary to work together to find ways the two seminaries might better collaborate.”
Met. Tikhon and Abp. Elpidophoros previously met at the GOARCH headquarters in August, and at the OCA headquarters in November.
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“Feed the Hungry” began in January 2015, when National Philoptochos President Maria Logus challenged chapters across the nation to “do more doing,” calling on all Philophtochos chapters to reach out and provide 250,000 meals to the hungry by the time of the National Philoptochos Biennial Convention in in July 2016.
The chapters rose to the occasion and reported that they had provided a staggering 750,000 meals.
Another 1,343,734 meals were provided by the time of the 2018 convention. The goal for the 2020 convention is 1,500,000 meals.
