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When Following three centuries of underground existence and persecution in the Roman Empire, it was again the Greek Church, the Greek language, and Greek missionaries that carried the Christian message in both the East and the West. This first period ended in 313 with the edict of toleration, where [[Constantine the Great]] divided the Roman Empire, and prepared the way for Christianity to become the state religion of the later Roman and Byzantine empires. The geographical area we know today as Greece and Macedonia constituted the diocese of Eastern Illyricum, which was self-governing.  For historical and other reasons, the Greeks for many centuries identified themselves solely as Christians and especially during the centuries of captivity under the Turks<ref>The tradition of the Greek Church has been one of religious toleration rather than nationalism. If this had not been true, the Greek Church, in the Byzantine centuries and especially during the four hundred years under the Turks, could have Hellenized all the minorities under her aegis or at least a great majority of them.</ref>. This is significant that although the patriarchs of Constantinople and many bishops of the Bulgarians, Albanians, and Slavs were Greeks during the Ottoman period, they did not attempt to Hellenize their congregations: neither did they try to force them to abandon their liturgical traditions and cultures.<ref> The Greek historian K. Paparigopoulos, known for his patriotism, blamed the Church for not exploiting here numerous opportunities to Hellenize the various Balkan peoples in a period of four hundred years, something she could have done without much difficulty.</ref> The term "Hellene" as an ethnic name began to appear among the Greeks of the high Middle Ages, but still was not commonly used. However, all nations living outside the medieval Greek world of the Byzantine Empire, such as the Russians, the Germans, Khazars, the English, the Georgians, the peoples of Italy, and the Franks, called the native inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire "Greeks." The designations "Greek Orthodox" and "Roman Catholic" were unknown in the early and medieval Church, and they took on their distinct meaning only after the eleventh century. By 733 AD, under Emperor Leo the Third, Greece was acknowledged as part of the [[Ecumenical Patriarch|Ecumenical]] Patriarchate of Constantinople but prior to this, it was subordinated to the Bishops of Rome.

The Greek language has been known as the "Sacred Language" <ref> Arthur P. Stanley, a distinguished professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford, some hundred years ago wrote in even more lively terms::''The Greek Church reminds us of the time when the tongue, not of Rome, but of Greece, was the sacred language of Christendom. It was a striking remark of the Emperor Napoleon that the introduction of Christianity itself was, in a certain sense, the triumph of Greece over Rome; the last and most signal instance of the maxim of Horace, Graecia capla ferum victorem cepit (captive Greece took its rude captor captive). The early Roman Church was but a colony of Greek Christians or Grecized Jews. The earliest Father of the Western Church wrote in Greek. The early popes were not Italians but Greeks. The name of the pope is not Latin, but Greek, the common and now despised name of every pastor in the Eastern Church. …. She is the mother and Rome the daughter. It is her privilege to claim a direct continuity of speech with the earliest times; to boast of reading the whole code of Scripture, Old as well as New, in the language in which it was read and spoken by the Apostles. The humblest peasant who reads his Septuagint or Greek Testament in his mother-tongue on the hills of Boeotia may proudly feel that he has access tot he original oracles of divine truth which pope and cardinal reach by a barbarous and imperfect translation; that he has a key of knowledge which in the West is only to be found in the hands of the learned classes.''</ref><ref> Hugo Rahner, a leading Roman Catholic theologian, adds::''"God spoke his revelation in the world of the Greek spirit and the Roman imperium and the Church guards this truth framed in the Greek speech of her sacred Book…The Church will continue to speak Greek even if…Hellas descend into the abyss of utter oblivion."''</ref><ref> [[Georges_Florovsky]]: :''"The task of our time, in the Orthodox world, is to rebuild the Christian-Hellenic culture, not out of the relics and memories of the past, but out of the perennial spirit of our Church, in which the values of culture were truly christened. Let us be more Hellenic in order that we may be truly Christian.''</ref> of the church from the time of the Apostles and enjoyed its prominence mainly in the early history of Christianity. In scriptural study and to a great extend it is one of the original languages of the Scriptures (the New Testament).

*Elder [[George (Karslidis) of Drama]] (1901-1959)

*Elder [[Amphilochius Amphilochios (Makris) of Patmos]] (+1970)

*Elder [[Philotheos (Zervakos)|Philotheos (Zervakos) of Paros]] (1884-1980)

*Elder [[PorphyriusPorphyrios (Bairaktaris) the Kapsokalivite|Porphyrios]] of Kavsokalyvia and Kallisa (1906-1991)

*Papa-Dimitri GagastathiFather [[Dimitris Gagastathis]]