On September 11, 2004, Patriarch Petros of Alexandria died in a helicopter crash in northern Greece.
Patriarch Petros of Alexandria was on board the plane along with 11 other church officials and five crew members. He was the spiritual shepherd of the 300,000 Christian Orthodox community in Africa.
The Chinook helicopter, on a flight to a monastery on Mount Athos, disappeared from radar screens about 10 miles (16 km) off the coast of Cape Akras in the Aegean Sea.
Patriarch Petros, 55, was born in Cyprus. Its African commune is one of the oldest in the world, dating back to the time of St. Mark.
55-year-old Alexandrian Patriarch Petros Petros was a respected church leader who breathed new life into the patriarchate and the entire Orthodox Church in Africa after he was elected the 115th Patriarch of Alexandria in 1997. The Patriarchate of Alexandria occupied an influential place in Orthodoxy since the dawn of Christianity in the ancient world.