President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopios Pavlopoulos, called his Albanian counterpart Ilir Meta on the telephone on Tuesday, and thanked him for granting Albanian citizenship to the Archbishop of Tirana, Durres and all Albania, Anastasios; the head of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania.
Pavlopoulos noted that the Albanian president’s initiative “is one more significant step in the direction of the further substantial improvement of relations between Greece and Albania.”
The Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Kotzias, also called Meta on Christmas Day, regarding the same issue.
In a meeting with his Albanian counterpart Ditmir Bushati in Crete in early November, Kotzias had asked that Archbishop Anastasios be granted Albanian citizenship.
The Greek foreign minister also hailed the decision in a tweet on Christmas Eve, welcoming it as a “recognition of [Anastasios’] deeply humanitarian work, and a strengthening of trust between our peoples.”
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