Celebrations in honor of the Icon of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn in Athens
21.02.2020
In the Orthodox parish of St. Marina in the Athens district of Ilioupoli took place a celebration in honor of the Icon of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn. Large delegation from Poland, headed by the Deputy Speaker of the Senate, Michał Kamiński and the Chairman of the Polish-Greek Parliamentary Group, Daniel Milewski, attended the ceremony, on 16th of February.
The ceremony was organized by the Hagia Marina Foundation and the parish of St. Marina in Ilioupoli. Deputy Speaker M. Kamiński was accompanied by a delegation of the Polish Sejm and Senate, which included MPs belonging to the newly created Polish-Greek Parliamentary Group in the Sejm, with its chairman D. Milewski. The Podlasie region and the voivodship self-government authorities were also represented in large numbers.
Celebrations related to the cult of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn take place in the parish of St. Marina for over 20 years, since in 1997 the then Orthodox Archbishop of Bialystok donated a copy of the icon to the Greek parish. This year, the ceremony was dedicated to the memory of the victims of the presidential plane crash near Smolensk and the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Warsaw - Miracle on the Vistula. Chargé d’affaires of the Republic of Poland in Greece Tomasz Wiśniewski underlined the significance of these events in Polish national consciousness, during his opening speech.
Photos by Tomasz Grześ
