December 28, 2015
On December 23 His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel paid early Christmas visits to the Church's St. Nektarios Palliative Care Center and the Patriarch Justinian Social Center, offering his prayers and various gifts, according to the Basical News Agency.
At the St. Nektarios Center His Beatitude met with twenty-eight patients, offering them words of encouragement, after which the Tronos choir of the Patriarchal Cathedral sang a number of Christmas carols.
The St. Nektarios Palliative Care Center was inaugurated in 2012 under the auspices of the Joy of Helping Foundation of the Archdiocese of Bucharest, every year providing free hospitalization and palliative medical care, as well as spiritual and psychological counseling for approximately 500 patients diagnosed with end-stage oncological diseases.
The patriarch also visited the children of the Patriarch Justinian Social Center who offered him flowers, sang several Christmas carols for him, and also presented an exhibition of Christmas greeting cards and ornaments.
His Beatitude blessed all present, saying:
We congratulate you and wish happy holidays to you and to all your dear ones, as well as to those who take care of you in this Center, extremely important for the ministry of the Church. We wish you to spend the feast of the Nativity of the Lord joyfully and peacefully, and may you have a happy New Year, with much success in your undertakings ... You represent the angels that announce the Nativity of the Lord. Therefore we wish you all a Merry Christmas and many and blessed years to come!
The Social Center is a program of the Diaconia Association of the Romanian Patriarchate founded in 1991 which provides housing for the victims of domestic abuse, and also after-school programs, private lessons and counselling for 40 children from vulnerable families.
