Patrick Comerford
I was honoured to be a special guest yesterday (7 December 2025) at Matins and the Divine Liturgy in the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Ambrose and Saint Sylianos in Stony Stratford, celebrated by Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira and Great Britain.
This was a patronal festival liturgy, celebrating the two patron saints of the church. But it was a joyful morning additionally because Archbishop Nikitas had decided to elevate the priest in the parish, Father Gregory Wellington, to the rank of archimandrite within the monastic priesthood.
After the Divine Liturgy, Archbishop Nikitas led us in some impromptu carol singing, and Charlotte and I were special guests at a celebratory lunch afterwards in the Swinfen Harris Church Hall seated alongside Archbishop Nikitas and Father Gregory. It was very much a Greek community event for Greek and Cypriot families in the greater Milton Keynes area, but the church celebrates its diversity, with Romanians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Russians, Slovakians, and many other backgrounds, including English-born people too.
This was an opportunity too to renew old friendships with people like Marina Robb, who had been a student with me on a number of summer courses at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Archbishop Nikitas is the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain, part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, since he was elected at the Ecumenical Patriarchate six years ago (12 June 2019). It is a large diocese with more than 100 churches and monasteries in England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Before his election as archbishop, he was the Metropolitan of the Dardanelles and director of the Patriarchal Institute of Orthodox Theology in Berkeley, California, and before that, from 1996, he was the first Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Hong Kong and South-East Asia.
Archbishop Nikitas and I first met at San’Anselmo, the Benedictine abbey and university in Rome, when I was chair of the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission and took part in a conference in Rome in September 2005 on the Church in China. We met again when I accompanied the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill, on a visit to China and Hong Kong in 2006 to meet Church leaders, visit theological colleges and to build links between the Church of Ireland and the Church in China.
In Hong Kong, Archbishop Nikitas presented me with a scroll that says in rich Chinese calligraphy:
The Apolytikion of the Chinese Saints Martyred 11 June 1900 at the Boxer Uprising, Tone Three:
Let us, the flock of Christ, with love and piety now glorify with hymns and truly joyous odes the faithful Martyrs of the truth who suffered for Christ in China. For having confessed the Faith, they all bravely went unto death as lambs which were sacrificed for our Shepherd and Master Christ. And therefore to the Martyrs we cry out: Remember us all, who sing your praises!
Archbishop Nikitas Lulias was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1955. He studied at the University of Florida, where he received a BA degree in religion (1976). He then attended Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Boston, where he graduated with the degree of Master of Divinity in 1980. He completed his postgraduate studies at the Theological School in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1982). He later he studied Russian at the St Petersburg Theological Academy in Russia (1992-1993).
He was ordained a deacon in 1985 by Archbishop Jacob of America and was ordained priest later that year. After working in diocese in the US, he was elected the first Metropolitan of Hong Kong and South-East Asia in 1996, and he was ordained bishop at the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in the Phanar in Istanbul. His new diocese included churches in South East Asia, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.
When he moved to California in 2007 as Director of the Patriarchal Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, California, he was also appointed Metropolitan of the Dardanelles Metropolis.
Archbishop Nikitas has spearheaded the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Committee on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery since 2017, meeting with various leaders and organizing three international forums on the issue in Istanbul (2017), Buenos Aires (2018) and Istanbul (2019).
He was elected Archbishop of Great Britain in 2019 and was enthroned in the Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom in London on 27 July 2019. He is a patron of the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius, and he took part in the coronation of King Charles III in May 2003.
