On Saturday 27th July 2019, a large crowd attended the Enthronement of the new Archbishop of Thyateira and Great Britain Nikitas at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, Moscow Road in Bayswater.

The event was watched live by thousands on the internet and screens were placed around the Church and at the Royal Lancaster Hotel banqueting hall in Central London where a lunch took place later.
Metropolitan Nikitas (Lulias)of Dardanelles, Exarch of All Hellespont, his birth name Nikitas Loulias was born in Tampa, Florida, United States June 22nd 1955.
He studied at the University of Florida, from which he received honours degrees in Religion (1976).
He then attended the Theological School of the Holy Cross of Boston, where he graduated in 1980 and then completed postgraduate studies at the Theological School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1982)
He was ordained a Deacon in 1985 by Archbishop Jacob of America and in the same year he became a Presbyter.

He served in Saints Constantine and Helen (Merriville, IN) Church, and, since 1987, in the Holy Diocese of Chicago as Secretary.

In 1988 he received the Archimandrite’s officium and became a Protosyncellus at the same Bishopric.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, he completed his studies in History and Russian language.

He taught selected courses on Orthodoxy at the Loyola University of Chicago.

On December 2, 1996, he was unanimously elected as Metropolitan of Hong Kong and ordained on the 14th of the same month at the Patriarchal Church of St. George.

His enthronement took place at St. Luca Cathedral in Hong Kong on January 12, 1997 and became the first regular priest of the newly-established Hong Kong Metropolis, and then he was appointed at the Dardanelles Metropolis in 2007.

It is finally worth mentioning that Metropolitan Nikitas is the Director of the Berkeley USA Patriarchal Orthodox Institute “Patriarch Athenagoras” in Berkeley, USA.