Message of His Eminence Metropolitan Aetolia and Acarnania and Damascenes for Sunday October 11, 2026translated

My beloved Fathers and Brothers,

My beloved children in the Lord,

We live in an age full of contrasts. An era of thousands of online "friends", but also of intense loneliness. An era of easy access to knowledge, but also of blatant ignorance. An era of Artificial Intelligence dominance, but also of profound emotional immaturity. An era of securing rights and freedom in the expression of every opinion, but at the same time, of intense hatred against those who believe, express themselves or live differently from us.

In many aspects of our social life, fanaticism dominates. It is expressed with aggression, irony, certainties, simplistic and hasty conclusions and, above all, with the refusal to listen to the opposing point of view. The fanatic man does not easily tolerate diversity. He considers the different as his "enemy". He considers as "his" those who agree with him and alienates, even with disgust, those who disagree.

Such a person, however, does not only hurt his relationships with others. He himself is getting sick. He does not evolve, because he is certain that what he believes and the way he acts have reached perfection. He is not spiritually enriched, because he thinks that...