Tirana Cathedral Inaugurated

The inaugural service was conducted by Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos, with the participation of Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilos, and the Archbishops of Serbia Eirinaios, Romania Daniel, Cyprus Chrysostomos, Greece Ieronymos, Warsaw Savvas, and the Hierarch of the Albanian Ortghodox Church Anastasios. The joint liturgy featured metropolitan representatives of the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, Moscow, Bulgaria, and Georgia.

The new cathedral comes as a crowning achievement of Archbishop of Tirana and all Albania Anastasios, who has offered a life of arduous service for the Church and the congregation. He has missioned to the needy of Africa, and endured persecutions, trials, tribulations, and prison by the erstwhile communist regime. When he came to the throne a few decades ago his flock was nonexistent and his church a shambles.

The new cathedral lies on a plot owned by the Albanian Orthodox Church in the center of the Albanian capital.