His Holiness and Beatitude Catholicos Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia visited London to consecrate a new Cathedral for the 30,000 strong community of Georgian Orthodox living in the United Kingdom. Having established a Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland with Bishop Zenon of Dmanisi as its first hierarch, the Catholicos – assisted by several bishops of the Georgian Orthodox Church and His Eminence Archbishop Gregorios of Thyateira - consecrated the Cathedral of the Nativity of our Lord at Rookwood Road, Clapton, London, N16 on Sunday, 6 February. The newly designated Cathedral was formerly known as The Ark of the Covenant and was built in 1892-5 to a design by Joseph Morris & Sons of Reading for the long extinct millenarian sect, the Apapemonites. Neglected after the war it was rented out to other church groups and at one time in the 1960s the British Orthodox Church used it on a monthly basis.
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