December 24, 2025 Christmas Eve, morning
H O M I L Y
Almost 40 years ago, in 1987, in Rome, Pope John Paul II received the visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I from Constantinople. Like the visit between Paul VI and Athenagoras in Jerusalem, some twenty years before, it was the encounter between two great and warm human beings. At the moment of departure, they stood for about ten minutes near the car that would bring Dimitrios to the airport, like two friends who cannot let go of each other, and Patriarch Dimitrios' last words were: " we have found in you a man, and we will be the messenger of your humility". In his official speech, he had said that he had come to share with Rome their respective spiritual traditions and riches. Now, at the end, he says: "we have met a man"; and I think it was the most beautiful thing he could say.