GOC-K To Have “Official Synodal Solemnization” of New Martyr St. Catherine (Routtes)
November 21, 2014 (Source: http://www.hsir.org)
NFTU: For a brief account of the Martyrdom of St. Catherine go here.
Protocol No. g-2054
Athens, November 1/14, 2014
Announcement to the Entirety of the Clergy and People of Our Church
Beloved Children in the Lord:
A hallmark of the true Church of Christ is that She at times undergoes persecutions at the hands of the powerful of this world. Our sacred struggle for the Orthodox Faith suffered bloody persecutions already from the outset of the apostasy from the Festal Calendar, a prelude to the tempest of ecumenism.
The first victim of these persecutions, the Protomartyr of the sacred struggle, was the New Martyr Catherine (Routtes). This valiant servant of God, seeing law enforcement agents attack an Orthodox Priest, risked her own life, and received a mortal blow herself, in lieu of the Priest, from the rifle butt of a pursuing policeman. As the historian of our sacred struggle, the late Metropolitan Kalliopios of Pentapolis, tellingly recounts, her funeral service was not a simple burial, “but a sacred procession with the Relics of a Martyr. Thousands of faithful accompanied the funeral cortege, some holding flowers, others candles, and others palm branches.”
Wherefore, the Holy Synod of the Hierarchy of our Church, during its session on September 5/18, this year, undertook to confirm the holiness, already acknowledge among the faithful of our Church, of the Holy New Martyr Catherine.
