The Holy Orthodox Church has searched long for a language with which to address nationalism, amid the strife and havoc this new ideology created in the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe for much of the 19th century. In 1872 a great Synod, held in our Patriarchal Cathedral at the Phanar in the name of the Prince of Peace, issued and unqualified condemnation of the sin of phyletism, saying, "We renounce, censure, and condemn racism, that is, racial discrimination, ethnic feuds, hatreds, and dissensions within the Church of Christ..."

Today, more than a century later, extreme nationalism remains one of the central problems of our ecumenical Church. We must answer with deep and uncompromising ecumenicism.

That is why the Mother Church has done everything in her power to support, morally and materially, the re-emerging Orthodox Churches in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe, especially since the collapse of Godless communism. Although these churches are self-governing, they are the daughters of the See of St. Andrew the Apostle.

That is why we convened an unprecedented Pan-Orthodox Council or Synaxis of the heads of the world's Patriarchal and Autocephalous Orthodox Churches in March of 1992 -- an unusual display of Christian solidarity, and a return to the ecumenicism of centuries past. During this truly historic gathering, the heads expressed deep sadness over "fratricidal confrontations and for all its victims" calling on all religious leaders to offer "particular attention, pastoral responsibility and wisdom from God, in order that the exploitation of religious sentiment for political and national reasons may be avoided."