Thessaloniki mayor in Istanbul

Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris will travel to Istanbul on Wednesday where he will be received by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, while on Thursday he will inaugurate an exhibition by British painter and architect Doug Patterson.

The exhibition at the Patriarchate-affiliated Zografeion Lyceum, to run until March 8, will be inaugurated by Boutaris in his capacity as the Mount Athos Center chairman. 

On display will be paintings of monastic communities, including Mount Athos and St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai.

Meanwhile, the municipality of Thessaloniki announced on Tuesday that the mayor's recent visit to Tel Aviv on Feb. 9-11 focused on making the city a more attractive tourism destination for Israeli visitors, while the issue of the return of Jewish community archives to Thessaloniki from Moscow was also raised.

It was also announced that the mayor of Tel Aviv will visit Thessaloniki in the near future, whereas Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem expressed a desire to establish a Sepulchre Exarchate in Thessaloniki.

On his part, Boutaris offered his support to the Organization of the Greek Survivors of the Holocaust, who have long lobbied to re-acquire Greek citizenship, which was lost when they left Greece to immigrate to Israel after WWII.  

SOURCE: ANA-MPA