In his public sermons or private conversations, the Patriarch often mentioned gratitude — an essential quality for a Christian and one that connects us to God. Now, in the time of his divinely granted repose, we see this gratitude from his people, his flock, and the international community, — this is what the leader of “European Georgia,” Gigi Tsereteli, writes on social media.

According to him, in difficult and sometimes heavy moments for the country, the Patriarch’s wisdom, calm, the power of his words, and his loyalty to the homeland were always reliable and present with us.

“What we are seeing in Georgia now — such mourning, the sincere sorrow, expressions of love and respect from tens of thousands of people of all generations and social strata, Orthodox and representatives of other religions — is the exceptional recognition and special, popular expression of gratitude for the half-century-long service of His Holiness and Beatitude, the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Archbishop of Mtskheta-Tbilisi, Metropolitan of Bichvinta and Tskhum-Abkhazia, Ilia II, in the service of the Lord and the people.

Today I returned to Georgia and experienced his dramatic deterioration of health even more emotionally from afar. However, we all probably had very little hope. He had endured critical moments many times before. By God’s grace, the efforts of doctors and his supporters, he continued to bear the heavy burden of being the spiritual shepherd of the nation.

Fate granted me thirty years of relationship with him — as the head of our Church, the most authoritative figure in Georgia, a spiritual shepherd, and a close person.

I was often with him in difficult, sometimes heavy moments for our country, and we always relied on his wisdom, calm, the power of his words, and his loyalty to the homeland. It was precisely these qualities that enabled him, over the last decades — at the turn of two centuries, amid epochal political and worldview transformations and challenges — to be the nation’s outstanding spiritual shepherd, to strengthen the Christian faith and the autocephaly of the Georgian Orthodox Church, to gain the greatest authority throughout the Christian world, and the highest trust in the homeland.

Naturally, I cannot fit everything I want to say into one post; I could recall many interesting details of my relationship with the Patriarch, but the years of work on the constitutional agreement between the state and the Church stand out in particular.

I had the honor of being the head of the parliamentary commission and had very frequent meetings with the Catholicos-Patriarch, with the hierarchs working on this issue, and I will never forget his support, goodwill, balanced position, and state-minded vision in that difficult, contentious, but historic process.

For me and my family, it was a particularly significant event when, 24 years ago, His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II became the godfather of my youngest son, Nikoloz, and an even closer person.

In his public sermons or private conversations, the Patriarch often spoke of gratitude — an essential quality for a Christian and one that connects us to God. Now, in the time of his divinely granted repose, we see this gratitude from his people, his flock, and the international community.

With this gratitude, I too bid farewell — together with very many people — for his support, his love, his humility, his prayer, his service, his labor…

This gratitude will remain forever, in the collective memory, it will be a distinguished page in our country’s history, and it will accompany him to the heavenly Georgia,” — writes Gigi Tsereteli.