(From left) Raju Bharat, the warden of the Greek Orthodox Church; Tsilis Konstantinos, the bishop of Singapore and South Asia and exarch of India; Aliki Koutsomitopoulou, the ambassador of Greece in India; and Sister Nektaria Pardisi, a Greek nun based in the city, at a Thanksgiving service to mark the centenary of the Greek Orthodox Church in Kalighat on Sunday.

“This is a joint place of religious harmony,” the bishop said at the event attended by representatives of several religious faiths.

“The Greeks arrived in Calcutta in the late 17th century and found here a place of promise which was fit for trade and which they could call home. The church in Amratolla Street (off Canning Street), built in 1779, became a sanctuary for the Greek families in a foreign land,” the ambassador said.

In the 1990s, Fr Ignatio and Sr Nektaria “breathed new life into Greek heritage in Calcutta” (by reopening the new church in Kalighat which was shut for two decades since 1972), the envoy said. “Today the church stands for a century of faith and devotion as also heritage, bearing memories of Greek presence in the city.”

Residents of a home for underprivileged children, on behalf of the Philanthropic Society of the Orthodox Church, a charitable NGO with its office on the church premises, presented a cultural programme.