By Gretchen Keiser

Bishop John, the first Greek Orthodox Bishop of Atlanta’s Cathedral of the Annunciation, was welcomed by the Archdiocese of Atlanta at a reception Feb. 18 at the Catholic Center. Members of the Religious Unity Commission, who hosted the reception, and clergy and religious attended.

Archbishop Thomas Donnellan and Father John Mulroy, director of the Archdiocesan Religious Unity Commission, presented Bishop John with a woodcut done by a monk of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, and depicting the Christ in icon form.

Bishop John and Archbishop Donnellan also led the gathering in the Lord’s Prayer and gave their blessing to those assembled, a gesture which Bishop John said was made in the same spirit and prayer for unity as the joint “Our Father” spoken by Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras at their historic meeting in Jerusalem in 1964.

Bishop John, who was joined at the reception by Father Jeremiah, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox diocese of Atlanta, is the first Greek Orthodox Bishop of Atlanta. The Church recently moved its diocesan headquarters here from Charlotte, N.C.