The metropolitan of Zimbabwe Theodore II, 50 years old, is to be the new patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa, the second ranking post in the Orthodox hierarchy after the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. He was unanimously elected by the Holy Synod of the patriarchate of Alexandria and will be officially enthroned in the course of a ceremony to be held on 24 October. Theodore succeeds the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria Petros VII, who died on 11 September together with 16 others following a helicopter crash over the Aegean Sea as he was trying to reach the Orthodox monastery of Mount Athos, in northern Greece. Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis and the primate of Greece, Christodoulos, have both sent messages of good wishes.
