Ecumenical Patriarch: The monuments of our faith are not mere sights

“As long as I live and breathe, I will not cease to come as a humble suppliant and pilgrim to the divine dwelling-places of the Church and of the Nation in Asia Minor, Mother of Saints, in Pontus, and in Eastern Thrace,” said the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in an address today, September 11, 2026, as he welcomed to the Phanar the participants in the Pilgrimage Journey to the City (Constantinople), Prousa, and Nicaea, organized by the Synodal Office for Pilgrimage Tours of the Holy Church of Greece.

The Ecumenical Patriarch expressed his appreciation for the Synodal Office for Pilgrimage Tours’ contribution to the cause of sacred journeys and properly understood religious tourism, which, he added, is a multidimensional phenomenon with serious social, cultural, spiritual, and economic dimensions.

“We believe that healthy religious tourism is never merely a leisure trip. The monuments themselves, which visitors enter, do not allow for that. The sanctity of the space of the churches and monasteries, the works of doxological art, the whole ethos and spirit of the place that houses or once housed a life dedicated to God — all of these transform the visitor into a pilgrim.…