Georgian Patriarchate is ready to dialogue with Abkhazia on Church Question

Tbilisi, December 9, Interfax – The Georgian Orthodox Church is open to the dialogue with Abkhazia, head of the Georgian Patriarchate Foreign Department Metropolitan Gerasim of Zugdidi and Tsaish told journalists.

Thus he commented on statements made by a representative of Abkhazian clergy priest Vissarion Aplia about readiness to tune church relations with Tbilisi.

Father Vissarion, according to Metropolitan Gerasim, said that representatives of the Georgian Church can visit Abkhazia.

The Georgian hierarch noted that the Abkhazian priest’s appeal to the dialogue is not the first, then “positions often changed” and representatives of the Georgian Church “were not given a chance to cross the administrative border.”

Metropolitan Gerasim has not specified how the dialogue between the parties can be launched, but added that the Patriarchate is ready to do it.

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