Temporary capital of Lithuania during the invasion of Poland, to Lithuania according to the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty. Since then Vilnius has been the capital of the Lithuanian SSR and then independent Lithuania. Lithuania refused to have diplomatic relations between Poland and Lithuania until the ultimatum of 1938. Railroad traffic, telegraph lines or even mail could not cross the Polish–Lithuanian border. Lithuania continued to declare Vilnius as its capital in all official documents, including the constitution. Since the city was controlled by Poland, all Lithuanian authorities were transferred to the city of Kaunas, which became the seat of the government. To reconcile reality with
United States recognition of Jerusalem as capital of Israel the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, Patriarch Theophilos III, widely regarded as the most senior Christian figure in Jerusalem, and twelve other church leaders in the Holy Land sent a letter to Trump warning that his move “w[ould] yield increased hatred, conflict, violence and suffering in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, moving us farther from the goal of unity and deeper toward destructive division”. Apart from Theophilos III, the letter was signed by heads of Jerusalem's Syrian, Armenian, Ethiopioan and Coptic Orthodox patriarchates as well as the Roman Catholic Church's Apostolic Administrator for Jerusalem (the Latin Patriarchate