Parliament Speaker: Patriarch Ilia II devoted 28 gruelling years to recognition of autocephaly, triumphed on March 4, 1990

The Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, has extended his congratulations to the public on the occasion of the restoration of the Autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Writing on social media, Papuashvili noted that His Holiness Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II devoted 28 of the most arduous years of his life to the cause of securing international recognition of the Church’s Autocephaly; a mission that was ultimately crowned with success on March 4, 1990.

“On March 25, 1917 (March 12 by the Old Style calendar), the clergy assembled at the great Cathedral of Svetitskhoveli in Mtskheta proclaimed the Act restoring the Autocephaly of the Apostolic Church of Georgia. After 106 years of humiliation without parallel in Georgian history, Georgian society seized upon the changes brought by the February Revolution and restored the Autocephaly of the Georgian Church, which had always been its foremost concern. That glorious act became the very foundation of Georgia’s long road to independence, a road to which countless generations and illustrious sons of the homeland made their contribution.

It was one such figure whom we bade farewell to just days ago, a towering Georgian, a selfless patriot, a true martyr for his country and his faith: Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II. He took up the heavy cross borne by his predecessor Patriarchs, carrying forward and bringing to fulfilment their life’s work and sacred struggle.

He devoted 28 of his most difficult years to the cause of having the Autocephaly recognised. Constantinople had been willing to grant recognition, but our Church guarded with immense care the priceless treasure it had preserved through centuries of turmoil: the Autocephaly received from Antioch in the fifth century, and it held fast to that inheritance. It fell to the Russian Church alone to acknowledge Georgian Autocephaly in 1943, doing so at Stalin’s behest. And then, on March 4, 1990, that greatest of causes was at last triumphantly achieved. On that day, the Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Dimitrios, Patriarch of Constantinople and Ecumenical Patriarch, presented our Patriarch with the tomos of recognition: the document acknowledging the Autocephaly of the ancient Georgian Church and confirming her rightful place in the hierarchy of the world’s Churches. It was a momentous day.

How fitting, too, that, as tradition holds, it was on March 25 in the year 326 that, by order of the newly baptised King Mirian, the timber of the True Cross was hewn, from which was fashioned the cross erected in Mtskheta, upon the very spot where our most cherished cathedral, Svetitskhoveli, would rise. Thus was Kartli converted; thus did Christianity become the spiritual cornerstone of the Georgian state, whose 1,700th anniversary we mark this very year.

My warmest congratulations to all on this most glorious of days,” Shalva Papuashvili posted.