Christ is risen!
With great sadness but in the hope of the resurrection, the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops of France announces the repose in the Lord of His Eminence Metropolitan Jeremie (KALLIGIORGIS), its former president, who fell asleep in the Lord on Friday, 20 June on the beautiful island of KOS, in Greece, the island that saw his birth in 1935, to which he returned for the end of his earthly life. With Metropolitan Jeremie’s departure to the Father’s House, the whole pleroma of the Orthodox Church in France is in mourning and in tears, even though an intercessor has been born for us in Heaven on this day!
Second Metropolitan of France, succeeding Metropolitan MELETIOS (KARABINIS) (1914-1993), Metropolitan Jeremie was the first president of the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops of France. Having laboured in the service and within the ranks of the Inter-Episcopal Orthodox Committee of France since its foundation in 1967, Metropolitan Jeremie subsequently saw to it, in 1997, together with his fellow Orthodox bishops of France at the time, that this Committee was transformed into a true Assembly, bringing together all the canonical Orthodox bishops in France.
Metropolitan Jeremie was always at the bedside of the Assembly of Orthodox Bishops of France. He unceasingly took care, with tact, wisdom, attentiveness and discernment, to overcome circumstantial tensions, so that this house of Orthodoxy in France would remain an ecclesial place where all the canonical Orthodox bishops of our country could meet, in truth and in friendship, to work together for the good of Orthodoxy in France. In critical moments, he always kept alive the dialectic of unity in diversity, that of an Orthodoxy one in faith and plural in expression. He saw in the Orthodox house of France only a beautiful mosaic of different colours, which shines in all its true splendour only if it remains united and gathered together.
His ecclesiastical and theological formation began at the Ecclesiastical School of Patmos, then at the Theological School of Halki, in Turkey. Ordained deacon in 1959, he was led by the Lord’s paths to serve His Church in France. In the City of Light, he obtained in 1963 the title of “Peritus Sacrae Liturgiae” from the Higher Liturgical Institute of Paris. His life since then has been devoted to the Holy Greek Orthodox Metropolis of France. Since his ordination to the priesthood in 1964 by Metropolitan Meletios, he served the Greek Metropolis of France as Vicar General (1964), then as Auxiliary Bishop with the title of the ancient See of Sasima (1971), and then as Metropolitan of France from 1988 to 2003. In January 2003, he was elected Metropolitan of Switzerland. He was Vice-President (1992-1997) and then President (1997-2003) of the Conference of European Churches (CEC). In January 2002, he was honoured by the President of the French Republic, Jacques CHIRAC, with the insignia of Knight of the Legion of Honour. In July 2018, he was elected to the historic Holy Metropolis of Ancyra (ANKARA), a see vacant since 1922.
What can one say of Metropolitan Jeremie? Deep emotion overcomes each of us, all of us who knew him, worked at his side, benefited from the tenderness and affection of his spiritual fatherhood, who appreciated the great liturgist that he was, who celebrated the Divine Liturgy in a sovereign manner, and sang with brilliance and joy in the manner of the great melodists of the Byzantine Great Church. It is the image of the “good shepherd,” kind and attentive, that will remain engraved in the mind of each of us and in our hearts in remembrance of him. He always conceived, and put into practice, his commitment in and for the Church as a true diakonia, a diakonia of affectionate and truthful fatherhood at the service of all.
Memory Eternal!