Theresa Villiers joined the congregation of St Katherine’s Church in Friern Barnet for their service on Orthodox Good Friday at the weekend.
A long-time supporter of the British Cypriot community, Theresa has been attending this special event in the Orthodox Christian calendar for several years.
Several hundred people attended the service or gathered outside for the procession.
Speaking after the service conducted by Very Revd Archimandrite Damianos Constantinou and his team, Theresa said “It was an honour once again to attend this very special service at St Katherine’s church in my constituency.”
“I know that their Christian faith plays a hugely important role in the lives of many of my British Cypriot constituents, never more so than on Good Friday and at Easter.”
“It is always wonderful to see the big turn-out at St Katherine’s for this service. The Orthodox Church does so much to keep the Cypriot community together. I applaud the work of St Katherine’s in caring for the community, for example by running projects to tackle loneliness amongst the elderly.”
“I send my Easter greetings to everyone celebrating Easter at the weekend including communities from Bulgaria, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine. I am sure that Easter events in Ukraine will have been especially poignant at this time of continuing Russian aggression towards that country.”
The eastern and western traditions of Christianity do not take the same approach to calculating the date of Easter, partly because the Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar, whereas the western use the Gregorian calendar. Easter is therefore usually celebrated on different days by the two traditions.
