Interview with Fr. Sotirios Trambas, then Metropolitan of Korea, now of Pisidia
(24 September 2012)
DOGMA – Church News Agency
Excerpt
A letter, a photograph, and a… caption were destined to change forever the life of the military chaplain and former Chief Secretary of the Archdiocese of Athens (1968–1973), Sotirios Trambas. It was an urgent request for a priest that arrived from Korea in 1975, the photograph of small children dressed in traditional local clothing outside an Orthodox church, and… the caption: “We feel like orphans.” Immediately, he decided to go, even if only for a short period, to help. Thirty-three years later, now as Metropolitan of Korea, Fr. Sotirios continues to live and serve in the land of the Morning Calm…
— What were the greatest problems you faced when you arrived there in 1975?
— The first was that I had no housing. For the first days I stayed in a hotel, then I rented an apartment. The conditions were harsh, and of course these difficulties continued for the first years. The only Orthodox church in all of the Far East at the time, the Church of Saint Nicholas, did not even have heating […].
