On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the Ecumenical Patriarchate every year celebrates the feast of the Synaxis of All our Holy Fathers, Archbishops and Patriarchs of Constantinople as a memorial.

This feast was first proposed and adopted under our Patriarch and Master Bartholomew I. Thus His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew, upon his election in 1991, urged the Endemousa Synod during a congress on 24 October 1991 to adopt the common celebration of all his predecessor Holy Archbishops and Patriarchs, from the founder of the Church of Byzantium the Apostle Andrew and by him the first Archbishop Stachys (38-54 A.D.) to Ecumenical Patriarch Kyrillos VI (1813-1818 A.D.), who was hanged over the doorway of the Metropolis of Adrianople on 18 April 1821. “So we will have the opportunity to invoke their grace and intercession before the Lord on behalf of the Mother Church and those therein,” said the Patriarch at this congress.

A synodal decision was made during the congress of the Holy and Sacred Synod on 19 November 1991, and this feast was adopted and has been celebrated since then festively and ecclesiastically in the Cathedral of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with the celebration of a Patriarchal and Synodal Divine Liturgy in the All-Revered Patriarchal Church of the Holy Great Martyr George the Trophy-Bearer. A Sacred Service was composed by the late hymnographer of the Holy and Great Church of Christ, Gerasimos Mikragiannanites, to be chanted on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, after the service of the Pentecostarion, as stated in the Typikon of the Great Church.

The Sacred Icon of the Saints was given by the member of the revered Hierarchy of the Ecumenical Throne, Metropolitan Nikodemos of Ierissos, Mount Athos and Ardameri and Exarch of All Halkidiki to the Mother Church.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.