The story of the Tipaldos family is the history of Diaspora in Naples. Many members of the family served for almost 100 years as Consuls of Greece in Naples and as leading members of the Greek Brotherhood, since 1861.

Two years ago, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after a proposal of the Greek community and the Federation of Greek Communities and Brotherhoods of Italy, awarded an honorary Distinction for the contribution of his family and himself to the historic community of Naples and to the Greeks of South Italy.

The Director General of the General Secretariat of Greeks abroad, George Markantonatos sent a condolence letter, stressing that the contribution and the work of Tipaldos to Greece end the ecumenical Hellenism will be an example and a source of inspiration for everyone. The Board of the Federation of Greek Communities and Brotherhoods of Italy expressed its condolences to the family of the deceased with an announcement.

The Ecumenical Patriarch extended an invitation to Cardinal Scola to visit the Phanar which was immediately accepted. As it became known, he will visit the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarchate from December 31 to January 2.

The visit of the Orthodox Primate to Milan was organized on the occasion of the 1,700 years since the Edict of Milan, which established the freedom of religion in the Roman Empire and put an end to the persecution of Christians.

The Patriarch officiated the liturgy in the overcrowded church of Santa Maria Podone, which has been granted by the Roman Catholic Church to the Greek Orthodox community of Milan. The Catholic Archbishop attended the liturgy.

In the Old Royal Palace of Milan, the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Italian Cardinal, in a celebratory speech, referred to the importance of religious freedom in today’s pluralistic societies, starting with a relative phrase of Jesus cited by St. John: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Cardinal Angelo Scola and the successor of St. Andrew, in a new ecumenical meeting at the Catholic Church of St. Ambroso, commented passages of the New Testament

The Patriarch visited Milan in Italy in order to participate in the celebrations of commemorating the 1,700 years of the Edict of Milan (Edictum Mediolanense), where he gave his opinion on the contemporary Orthodox elders.

Addressing the Romeo Catholic monastic brotherhood of the ecumenical Monastic Community of Bose, Bartholomew said:

“We have to admit that we are touched by the multiannual spiritual effort of Fr Enzo and your Brotherhood, by the love, interest and respect to the Orthodox Church and to the Orthodox spirituality, variously expressed through the organization of monastic life, having the Oriental monastic life as standard, through the organization of conferences to deepen into the orthodox spirituality, where representatives of Orthodox theology and thought participate; as well as through the elevation and study of the life and teaching of top contemporary figures and elders of the Orthodoxy, as Saint Silouan, Elder Sophronius Sakharov of Essex, Elder Porfyrios, Elder Paisios, and of course through the remarkable publishing work of your Community.”

The Patriarch noted how many things divide the East and the West. He referred to the efforts of translating the words of Saint Gregory Palamas.

On May 17, the respective anniversary celebrations of the Edict of Milan’s commemoration start in Istanbul.

The exhibition includes the 41 icons which were transferred to Athens after the deadly earthquake of 1908, which completely destroyed the Italian city of Messina and the historical Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Nicholas, where the valuable icons had been exposed for almost three centuries. Almost the entire Greek community of Messina, which was one of the most active communities in southern Italy, decided to move to Greece.

Some of the topics of the 41 byzantine icons are the Almighty, the Martyr, Saint Catherine and the Birth of Christ.

The exhibition was organized by the Region of Sicily, the Federico II Foundation, the Sicilian Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (ISSBI) and the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens, after language professor Daniel Makris’ proposition, and with the initiative of the Greek Community in Steno.

From May 26, the residents of the capital of Sicily, Palermo, will have the chance to visit the exhibition at the seat of the Region of Sicily, Palazzo dei Normanni (Norman Palace).

However, Open Data that has researched World Bank statistics stresses also the other side of remittances that concern the money transferred from Albania to other countries. This data refers to immigrants who work in Albania and send their income back to their families abroad or deposit their money to branches of their country’s banks in Albania. According to echedoros-a.gr, “In 2011, around 50 million euros were sent from Albania to the countries of origin of the foreign workers in Albania.”

About 87 percent or 43.8 million euros were sent to Greece from Greek citizens who work in Albania as immigrants. Their presence there has to do with the construction of some parts of the road network in the south of the country, as well as with the big number of Greek companies operating in Albania.

Regarding the money transfers towards Albania, the largest foreign exchange inflows in the country come from Greece and Italy. The Albanian immigrants in Greece have sent back to Albania 310,243,000 euros, 47 percent of the total number of remittances, making Greece first sender of remittances in the country. Italy follows with 248,710,000 euros, according to an article published at the Albanian newspaper Gazeta Shqip.

The station, which belongs to former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Group, featured the remarks of Alexandros Vasilikos, President of Athens-Attica & Argosaronic Hotel Association, who said that “that hotel reservations have risen by 25 percent with a significant increase of British, German and Russian visitors”. The station added that: “This year, tourism will be mark an explosive growth,”in Greece.

“Greek tourism has a rising trend and very soon, in the weeks to come it will return to the levels common to the Greek tourist reality before the crisis,” adds Italian journalist Isabella Yoska.

Tg5 stated that, despite the fall of the prices, the quality of the tourism services has not been affected, while there are no longer strikes or protests to trouble tourists. Egypt, a main rival of Greece as far as tourism is concerned, faces a period of instability.

Delegates from more than 60 institutions of higher learning that belong to UNIMED will participate. Besides Greece, there are 13 other countries represented: Algeria, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey.

The conference is held in the framework of a new Erasmus program developed by the European Union for the Mediterranean in 2014-2020. Participants will be provided with detailed explanations of what that program will entail, and will debate technical, operative, political and cultural issues around its implementation based on past experience, according to ANSAmed.

The conference will take place at the State Archives in Rome on April 22-23. Speakers and representatives of the European Commission, in particular of DG Education and Culture, rectors and representatives of international relations offices associated to UNIMED network, Erasmus delegates and representatives from UNIMED-Students will participate in the event, as reported in UNIMED’s official website.

UNIMED was founded in the early 90s and consists of 84 universities based in the Mediterranean Basin. Its main aim is to develop scientific and educational cooperation in the Euro-Mediterranean region, in order to contribute to the process of integration between the two Mediterranean shores.

Some of the fields of UNIMED’s activities are tangible and intangible cultural heritage, economics, energy, environment, management of water resources, transports, health, media, new technologies, history, agriculture and tourism, as mentioned in UNIMED’s website.

This year’s events focus on the notion of the “other,” and the “foreigner” underling the need for diversity to be respected.

The festival Milano incontra la Grecia has run for six years by the platform Σattellart-transmitting Greece with the view of promoting Greek culture in the Italian city of Milan. This year, the fabled Piccolo Teatro opens again its doors to host two interesting performances.

The first goes under the title The Foreigner: Austras or Couch Grass (by Lena Kitsopoulou.) The Greek National Theatre invited two of the country’s best known young writers, Giannis Tsiros and Lena Kitsopoulou, each to write a one-act play inspired by the word “foreigner”.

A group of young friends invite a tourist in Greece to visit them at home, creating tension between them and bringing about unexpected consequences. Armed with a sharp wit and a bold ideological position, the writer makes an outstanding comment on distortions and pathologies in Greek society arising from the issue of immigration.

The second performance under the title Humaterra by Dagipoli Dance Co is decribed: The play is not essentially about disability, but disability exists throughout the work; Disability just exists because it cannot vanish and the dancer and the audience cannot deny its existence. It exists discreetly in the work but it often disappears and comes back, reversing roles and the dancers’ anthropometric scale. It is a confrontational game that invites the viewer to come out of the convenient position of an observer and collide with his stereotypes and demons.

Important Greek and foreign artists have appeared during the festival such as Theodoros Terzopoulos, the National Theatre of Greece, Savinna Yannatou, Lydia Koniordou, Rootlessroot, Andonis Foniadakis, Giorgos Koumendakis, Rimini Protokoll, Aiep-Ariella Vidach, Moni Ovadia, Taldans, Sentieri Selvaggi and many more, as well as entities such as The State Museum for Contemporary Art and the photography agency Magnum.

The festival is organized under the auspices of the Greek Consulate-General in Milan and the Municipality of Milan.

In 1909, the 43 valuable icons that were rescued from inside the church and date from 1250 to 1850 were sent to Greece as an expression of gratitude and since then, have been exhibited in the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens.

After the language professor Daniel Makris’ proposition, and with the initiative of the Greek Community in Steno, the icons will be hosted in the Regional Museum of Messina until May 26 and in Palazzo dei Normanni (Norman Palace), the seat of the Region of Sicily, in Palermo, for another two months.

The exhibition will have the title, Immagine e Scrittura. Presenza greca a Messina dal Medioevo all’età moderna, (Icons and manuscripts. The Greek presence in Messina from Medieval to modern times). It is organized by the Region of Sicily, the Federico II Foundation, the Sicilian Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (ISSBI) and the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens.

Ionian Islands Region (PIN) was noted the best organized participation. PIN, due to special circumstances (neighboring and large number of visitors’ recipient), participated autonomously with a newsstand for every prefecture. The Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) did not participate in the exhibition, but PIN offered it space in its own stand to promote Greece.

The Region announced that “spectacular changes concerning Italians’ travel behavior should not be waited, because of economic conjunctures and of lack of promotion towards this way.” PIN notes that the fact that Corfu is very close to Italy is negative because Italians prefer to visit the island on their own, without being organized by travel agencies.

The Mayor of Capri, twinned with Corfu, of Monte di Procida, twinned with Ithaca and four more mayors of Campania honored the Ionian Islands stand with their presence and expressed their will to cooperate with the Ionian Islands in the fields of culture and tourism. The prefect Spyros Spyrou invited the aforementioned mayors to visit the Region.

Meetings with the greatest tour operators took place, during which problems concerning the maritime link and the lack of direct flights from South Italy were presented. The Ionian Islands Tourism Companies has undertaken the meetings coordination, while G. Papavlasopoulos from Corfu, P. Stathatos from Kefalonia and N. Kapsaski from Zakynthos attended the exhibition.