On 24 August 2022 the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Kallistos Ware died, aged 87 years. He had been born in Bath, Somerset, as Timothy Richard Ware on 11 September 1934. He was educated at Westminster School in London and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1958 at the age of 24 he became an Orthodox layman and was ordained as a monastic priest and archimandrite in 1966. He also became Spalding lecturer at the University of Oxford in the Eastern Orthodox studies, having also published a book entitled The Orthodox Church in 1963 and The Orthodox Way in 1979. He was consecrated as Bishop of Diokleia in Phrygia of the British Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira.

Abba Seraphim became a close friend with him when he was only a deacon and shared with him some of his historical studies on the history of Orthodoxy in Britain, especially Ex Oriente Lux (2008) which was the story of Dr. Joseph J Overbeck (1820-1905) and Father Stephen Hatherly (1827-1905), two converts to Orthodoxy with different conceptions of founding an indigenous Orthodox Church.  When he became a Metropolitan he and Abba Seraphim gathered together occasionally and became very friendly.

Following his recent death, Abba Seraphim held a panikhida of prayers for his repose and instructed his British Orthodox faithful and clergy to maintain regular prayers for his repose in Christ.

Memory Eternal!