Arrest of abbot is an attack on Orthodoxy, Moscow Patriachate declares: The Church of England Newspaper, January 13, 2012, p 7. January 16, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox.Tags: Archimandrite Ephraim, Metropolitan Hilarion, Mt Athos, Vatopedi Monastery
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Archimandrite Ephraim, Abbot of the Vatopedi Monastery at Mt Athos
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Russian Orthodox Church has denounced the arrest by Greek police of Archimandrite Ephraim, the abbot of the Vatopedi Monastery on Mt. Athos, calling it an attack on the Orthodox Church.
On 28 December 2011, Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, told the Interfax news agency that it was unconscionable for Greece to refuse bail for the head of the thousand year old monastery in Northern Greece.
He said he had no knowledge of the charges brought against the abbot and added that “whether these charges are just, the Greek court will decide; we cannot interfere.”
“However, it is quite obvious that detention under remand of Archimandrite Ephraim, who does not pose any danger, without considering the case on its merits and before a court ruling, is an extraordinary action that surprises us deeply. The authorities arrested nobody but the elderly and ailing priest. This ruling arouses grave concern of believers of the Russian Orthodox Church, puts her hierarchs on guard, and makes us ponder over its true reasons,” Hilarion said.
On 24 December 2011 Greek police arrested the abbot and are holding him in cell at a maximum security prison in Athens. A Greek appellate court subsequently ruled the elderly monk was a danger to society and should not be granted bail.
Ephraim is accused of being involved in a €100 million land swap deal with the Greek government that prosecutors say defrauded the government. The monastery is alleged to have exchanged low value rural land for high value Athens real estate in a deal made with the New Democracy party government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis in 2008. After news of the swap became public the government cancelled the deal and two ministers resigned after a public outcry. The Greek Parliament voted to investigate the transaction.
The Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement via Twitter that said Moscow was concerned by Greece’s decision to arrest Ephraim and objected to Greece’s rejection of standards set by the European Court of Human Rights on arrest and bail.
Last month Ephraim escorted a relic from the monastery, the Belt of the Mother of God, to Moscow. “Russians are deeply grateful to the brothers at Vatopedi Monastery for the opportunity to venerate the Belt of the Holy Mother of God,” the foreign ministry statement said.
Supporters of the abbot claim the arrest is politically motivated. According to the Voice of Russia and Interfax, Sergey Rudov, head of The Society of Friends of the Vatopedi monastery said police bullied the abbot.
“Staying in cold Russia was a serious trial for [Ephraim]. And when he visited Patriarch Ilia in Georgia, he wasn’t far from dying. Father [Ephraim] needs constant medical attention. He was questioned for 30 hours in Greece. And they told him during questioning: you’ve been to Russia, you talked to Putin, Medvedev, but they won’t help you,” he said.
Rudov claimed there could be two reasons behind the arrest. “One is that the EU has now been insisting for a long time that the Athos monasteries should be stripped of their special status and subordinated to the Greek government to a greater extent, because the EU is unhappy about the fact that currently, one needs a special visas to be able to visit the monasteries on Mount Athos.”
“The second reason is that some people in Europe are unhappy about the growing influence of Russians in Greece – mainly because of the close ties between the Greek and the Russian Churches.”
Hilarion said Ephraim was “widely known not only in Greece, but also in the entire Orthodox world as a spiritual leader” and was “near and dear to many in the Russian Orthodox Church.”
The Russian church and state were distressed by the arrest and as was the Greek Church which believes “that the ruling on Archimandrite Ephraim is a hostile attack against the [Athos] monks and the entire Orthodox Church,” Hilarion said.
