Prince Philip, Orthodoxy and His Unknown Visit to Mount Athos in 1992

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born on the Greek island of Kerkyra on the dining room table of the villa of Mon Repos on 10 June 1921.

He was baptized by the Greek Orthodox priest Fr. George Sardanis, at the Church of Saint George in the Old Fortress.

When he was eighteen months old he was exiled from Greece with his family. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, had been sentenced to death for high treason after the Asia Minor catastrophe, and was saved at the last minute, with British intervention. He was blamed in part for the country's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) and for the loss of Greek territory, and the family was forced into exile until the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935.

The British naval vessel HMS Calypso evacuated Prince Andrew's family, with Philip carried to safety in a cot made from a fruit box. Philip's family went to France, where they settled in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud in a house lent to them by his wealthy aunt, Princess George of Greece and Denmark. Prince Andrew and his family were stripped of their Greek nationality, and traveled under Danish passports.

Aristotle Onassis and the Bishop

 

On March 15, 1975, Aristotle Onassis passed away. In his memory, Archimandrite Fr. Timotheos Iliakis published an incident that was often narrated by the late Metropolitan of Paramythia Titos Matthaiakis (+ 9/4/1991).

One summer after the Divine Liturgy in beautiful Parga, the pastor of the church had a lunch for the Metropolitan in a beach restaurant. Suddenly Onassis appeared with his friends, wearing shorts, a simple shirt and sandals. As soon as he saw the Metropolitan, he notified the owner of the restaurant and asked for a special place to sit alone for a while, while at the same time he sent someone from his escort to his boat.

Princess Diana, Her Greek Friend, and Metropolitan Paul of Siatista

The late Metropolitan Paul of Siatista (+ 2019) for years served as Hierarchical Commissioner of Mantoudi in Evia and was always dear to the people.

In September 1996, Yiannis Kalyviotis, who suffered from cystic fibrosis, passed away. The 27-year-old Yiannis was the eldest of the four children of the Kalyviotis family from Limni in Evia. He had finished law school and was a practicing lawyer in Halkida when he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. He went to England in 1995 where he remained for twenty whole months in treatment at Royal Brompton Hospital in London. He was accompanied to London by Father Paul Ioannou, the future Metropolitan of Siatista.