Patriarchal Message for the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year (2026)

Patriarchal Message for the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year

and the Solemn Day of Prayers for Natural Environment

( September 1, 2026)

† B A R T H O L O M E W

BY THE MERCY OF GOD

ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE–NEW ROME AND ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH

GRACE, PEACE, AND MERCY UNTO THE ENTIRE PLENITUDE OF THE CHURCH FROM THE FASHIONER OF ALL CREATION

OUR LORD AND GOD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST

* * *

Most Reverend and Right Reverend Brother Hierarchs, and blessed children in the Lord,

By the grace of God, the giver of all good things, we enter today into the new ecclesiastical year, honouring and celebrating at its commencement, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, the “Day of Prayer for the Protection of the Natural Environment.”

The multidimensional contemporary ecological crisis is a crisis of human freedom, of our religion and philosophy, of our ethos and our culture. What comes first is the “harmful alteration” of our freedom — our severance and alienation from the Source of Life; what follows is conduct destructive of the natural environment. We feel profound gratitude that the pioneering initiatives and interventions of the Ecumenical…