On Friday 31 May 1850, Florence Nightingale, who was then thirty years old, wrote to her sister Parthenope Nightingale from Athens, about her travels and experiences in Greece. After expounding with lofty words about the glories of ancient Greece, she finally begins to talk about Greece as it was in her time, and initiates the conversation by proclaiming "the Greek Church is dead." It seemed like she hated everything that has to do with the Greek Orthodox Church, even Greek weddings (!), and much preferred the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches. Earlier while in Rome she blamed Greek monks for bringing images of Christ to the West, accusing them for dispelling the reverence of depicting Christ as a symbol as was done in the early Church. The only positive things Florence Nightingale had to say about the Orthodox Church was directed to individual monks and the then dead Archbishop Germanos of Patras because he "thought the best religion was to give his country independence and a constitution." Her denunciation of Orthodoxy held equally for the Russian Church, fueled by the persecution of the nuns of Minsk. Later, during the Crimean War during which she served as a nurse, Russia was the enemy.
