Winston Churchill and representatives of America and France arrived in Athens on this day in 1944 to meet with warring Greek rebels. Сhurchill convinced King George II of Greece to appoint Archbishop Damaskinos, the Regent of Greece. Dimitrios Papandreou, the future Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens, was born in 1891 in Western Greece. Before the Balkan wars in 1912–13, he graduated with distinction from the Theology and Law Departments of the University of Athens. He then volunteered to fight with the Greek Army in the Balkans. In 1917, he was tonsured a monk with the name Damaskinos and began to work in the chancellery of the Archbishop of Athens. To consolidate lay theologians and clergy, he organized a Pan-Clerical Union (Pankliriki Enosis). On December 22, Archbishop Damaskinos was consecrated Bishop of Corinth. After the earthquake in April 1928, Archbishop Damaskinos went to America, where he succeeded in raising substantial funds for the victims. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Church in the continental US began to organize Orthodox Christians of various ethnic backgrounds into a local Orthodox Church. The Greeks did not want to be part of this process; instead, they invited their clergy directly from the Church of Greece. Archbishop Damaskinos oversaw the transition of the Greek Archdiocese from the Church of Greece to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Not long before World War II, Metropolitan Damaskinos returned to Greece. He became one of the candidates for Archbishop of Athens, but Damaskinos’s opposition to the government of General Metaksas worked against him. The Synod approved Archbishop Chrysanthos, who had received one less vote than Archbishop Damaskinos. After the Nazis’ occupation of Greece, the Synod deposed Archbishop Chrysanthos and elected Damaskinos. He did not become a tool in the hands of the new regime. Damaskinos instructed his priests to issue for Jews false baptismal certificates and openly criticized Nazi racial theory. After the country's liberation in 1944, Damaskinos became regent of Greece, thus reconciling the National Liberation Front and monarchist guerilla fighters. Source: Monk Benjamin (Gomarteli), “Letoposi sobytii tserkovnoi istorii nachinaia s 1917 goda” [Timeline of Church Events Beginning with 1917] Part III (1939-1949), Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad. | 
