On Monday, Bishop Iustin of Maramureș and Sătmar visited Nicaea, the city where the First Ecumenical Council was held 1,700 years ago. The visit is part of an extensive pilgrimage from February 6 to 11, covering several monasteries and historic sites in Cappadocia and Asia Minor.
Among the significant stops was the church where the Seventh Ecumenical Council took place in 787, a pivotal moment in Church history that reaffirmed the veneration of icons and condemned the iconoclast heresy.
Pilgrims also visited Bursa, where they explored the Great Mosque, the first Turkish mosque with multiple domes, considered a major monument of Islamic architecture.
Over the weekend, the group visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, where they were received by His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.
The Ecumenical Patriarch welcomed the pilgrims and emphasized the close ties between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Bishop Iustin thanked him for the warm reception and noted that the pilgrimage was conducted with the blessing of Patriarch Daniel of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
As a gesture of appreciation, Bishop Iustin presented the Ecumenical Patriarch with an epitrachelion, an omophorion, a epigonation depicting Saint Joseph the Confessor, a diocesan set of engolpion and cross, a traditional Maramureș voivodal cross, a photo album of Maramureș wooden churches, and The Journal of Joy by Fr Nicolae Steinhardt, translated into French.
Photo: Diocese of Maramureș and Sătmar
