Ecumenical Patriarch performs a memorial service for Ukrainians who died during the Great Famine

This is reported by the portal "Credo.Press" citing the blog "Romaleo fronimati".

Concelebrating to the Patriarch were Metropolitan Theophilus of Imvros and Tenedos, Bishop Adrian of Halicarnassus and Archimandrite Kharlampy (Nitsev), who provides pastoral care to the Ukrainian community of Istanbul.

The church was attended by the Consul General of Ukraine in Istanbul Oleksandr Gaman, as well as a limited number of consulate employees and members of the Ukrainian city-parish as per existing sanitary restrictions.

In his speech, the Patriarch noted that the XX century could be considered the most tragic period in the history of humankind, which was marked by two world wars, as well as other disasters:

"Among them, we should recall the Holodomor, the Great Famine in Ukraine, intended to exterminate from seven to ten million pious Ukrainians during the most terrible years of the Soviet regime, from 1932 to 1933."

Patriarch Bartholomew noted that the Holodomor was an artificially provoked famine, "a diabolical plan of the Stalinist system aimed at the pious people to eradicate the Christian faith and the Orthodox Church." "While people were starving, the Soviet regime exported grain abroad, creating the illusion that Ukraine was a prosperous country," the Patriarch recalled.

He thinks the prayer for the victims of the Holodomor must be a reminder to humanity, "so that we never forget such a criminal famine. Instead, we should condemn the Holodomor so that such atrocities do not recur in the history of humankind."