Greek Orthodox Church in turmoil

DIscussion and News concerning Orthodox Churches in communion with those who have fallen into the heresies of Ecumenism, Renovationism, Sergianism, and Modernism, or those Traditional Orthodox Churches who are now involved with Name-Worshiping, or vagante jurisdictions. All Forum Rules apply. No polemics. No heated discussions. No name-calling.


Apologist
Jr Member
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat 18 December 2004 7:00 am

Post by Apologist »

G.O.C. or not, humans sin. It isn't a matter of faith or doctrine... I also read about the G.O.C. Archibishop Auxentios raping the young greek-american priest (Iakovos Yosakis). Let's pray...

User avatar
TomS
Protoposter
Posts: 1010
Joined: Wed 4 June 2003 8:26 pm
Location: Maryland

Audit the church

Post by TomS »

Audit the church

The church is a perfect example of the dishonesty and inefficiency thatexists throughout the state because it is an extension of the state

JOHN PSAROPOULOS


THE CHURCH of Greece fully deserves the crisis in which it finds itself. For years we have heard about sexual depravities and property scandals unbecoming to the purported ambassadors of God on Earth. Now a new ring of corruption is unveiled, involving some of the highest enforcers of secular law in connection with at least one of the interpreters of divine will. The Holy Synod's recommendation that Archmandrite Iakovos Giosakis be suspended is welcome, but it is not nearly enough.

The problem the church faces today is its complete unaccountability, not only to anyone else but even to itself. Each of 100 metropolitanates nominally reports to the Archbishop in Athens, but in reality these administrative regions are run as autonomous Ottoman cifliks. This means that financial accounts and property dealings are difficult to centralise and monitor.

Archbishop Christodoulos now faces an enormous problem in disciplining his ranks. The truth is, he cannot do it alone. He needs the help of the state, which is, in turn, hobbled by the fact that it is inexorably fused with the church.

Priests are only spiritually beholden to the church. Their real employer is the state, which will this year spend 157 million euros on their salaries and pensions. They are, by law, civil servants, and poorly performing ones at that. Churches charge for their services, although they are supposed to be free. It goes beyond the big three, baptism, marriage and the Great Ushering Off: individual priests illegally charge to perform blessings, exorcisms and other indispensable services. In the countryside, itinerant priests who are supposed to service more than one village often refuse to do their rounds without inducement. Across the country, services are poorly attended because they are poorly performed. The Greek Orthodox liturgy, founded on the mystery of faith, the power of church theatre and a musical tradition going back to ancient times, is today mumbled out of tune, in neon-lit domes. In short, people aren't getting their money's worth, and are in the process losing the beauty of their tradition.

The church is a perfect example of the dishonesty and inefficiency that exists throughout the state because it is an extension of the state. Unfortunately, this fusion is not a political decision that can be easily undone; it is an expression of our culture.

Greece is living in a continuation of Byzantium. We are in arrested development as a modern nation because the image we have of ourselves is the last one of any consequence to the world - as the empire that legalised Christianity and made it a state religion. In Constantinople, the Greeks made a potent mixture of secular and religious power in Patriarch and Emperor long before the Ottomans made Caliph and Sultan.

Whereas the hero worship of Kemal Ataturk replaced Islam as the state religion in modern Turkey, here in Greece we have perfectly embalmed the rule of church and state. The Archbishop swears in governments; his officers bless military missions abroad, and the hulls of military ships know holy water before brine. Early each year, a Greek house invites a priest to perform a blessing; the cross hangs in all our courts of law; icons adorn the nation's police stations, as though the saints were somehow engaged on the side of the law; the nation's classrooms are adorned by Christ; each session of parliament begins with a dais-full of raven cloaked priests.

In an unnoticed and tacit fashion, therefore, we are a kind of theocracy. It is time for Greece to stop cleaving to the church as its main distinguishing characteristic in the airport culture that is globalisation. We need to find our identity in what is still the world's most distinguished bibliography of secular literature, and see the church for what it really is - a human institution made to serve man; and let us ensure that it does so. We need to finally turn this country into a secular democracy with true separation of church and state.

It is no longer tolerable for the church to draw its salaries from taxation like the civil service, or to insist on playing a part in politics, as it tacitly does to support the conservatives, because Pasok is the only party ever to have challenged it. It is not tolerable for the church to prevent the teaching of other religions in secondary schools. And it is not tolerable that the church should hide among its black cloaks crooks and men of worldly ambition, while denying accountability to any earthly power.

Everyone, from private individuals to corporations and charities to government itself, sooner or later is called to account. The church should be no exception. It is an earthly institution with earthly possessions. New Democracy should now put its money where its mouth is and be a party of reform; it should seize the current scandal to table a bill in parliament that would force the church to present a full accounting of its holdings, income from donation boxes and larger bequests, as well as its expenditures. The church need not lose its tax-exempt status, but it can thus acquire a transparency that will assist its leaders in the exercise of management, allowing clerics to focus on doctrine and what ought to be the church's wider social role.

If this process is not begun, the materialism and spiritual corruption of the church will only worsen, and the laiety will one day discover that what lies hidden behind the iconostasis is not a sacrificial altar, but a sack of loose change.

ATHENS NEWS , 04/02/2005, page: A99
Article code: C13116A999

----------------------------------------------------
They say that I am bad news. They say "Stay Away."

User avatar
George Australia
Sr Member
Posts: 671
Joined: Sat 17 January 2004 9:26 am
Location: Down Under (Australia, not Hades)

Re: Audit the church

Post by George Australia »

In an unnoticed and tacit fashion, therefore, we are a kind of theocracy. It is time for Greece to stop cleaving to the church as its main distinguishing characteristic in the airport culture that is globalisation. We need to find our identity in what is still the world's most distinguished bibliography of secular literature, and see the church for what it really is - a human institution made to serve man;

Yes, it is time for the last Christian theocracy to be removed from the Earth.
Away with the Church!
We have Homer and Socrates, and the brilliant Nikos Kazantzakis!
We are masters of our own fates and captains of our own ship!
Who needs Christ? Who needs Panagia?
What have they ever done for us?
Let us follow that brilliant prophet of the West, Neitzche, who had the courage to declare God DOA.
After all, what has Christianity ever given Greece? Away with it! And let's see what comes in it's place!
Our eyes have opened from the darkness of the tyrranical reign of the Orthodox Church, and we have seen the glory of the Global Village...and it looks just like LA!

I pray that people like Mr. John Psaropoulos realise that what they want to usher in is the reign of Antichrist.

"As long as it depends on Monothelitism, then Miaphysitism is nothing but a variant of Monophysitism."

User avatar
TomS
Protoposter
Posts: 1010
Joined: Wed 4 June 2003 8:26 pm
Location: Maryland

The archbishop imposes a gag order on clergy

Post by TomS »

Greek Church crisis deepens

The archbishop imposes a gag order on clergy after being linked to thefugitive drug dealer

GEORGE GILSON


THE ORTHODOX Church of Greece placed a gag order on all clergy, just two days after press revelations linking Archbishop Christodoulos to a man arrested for heroin dealing one year later. The mounting church crisis, with daily revelations of bishops' scandals, is widely considered Christodoulos' greatest challenge in his seven-year ministry, and some believe it could even jeopardise his position at the church's helm.

The man - who is named Apostolos Vavylis and used the alias Apostolos Fokas - in a sworn affidavit submitted to Israeli authorities said that Christodoulos sent him as an envoy to help secure the election of Patriarch Eirinaios of Jerusalem in 2001.

Vavylis had been placed on an Interpol wanted list by Italian authorities in 1994 for drug trafficking. He was convicted in Larissa in 1991 for transporting over one kilo of heroin, for which he received a 13-year sentence. Two years later, the sentence was suspended for 15 years, reportedly after he offered information leading to the arrest of other dealers.

In Jerusalem, Vavylis said he was accompanied by retired Greek policeman Yannis Triantafyllakis and priest Nikodimos from the Chrysopigi monastic brotherhood of which Christodoulos was a member.

The Athens lower court prosecutor's office ordered an emergency investigation on February 10 to probe how Vavylis was able to cross borders and sell armoured cars and bullet-proof vests in 1996 to the public order ministry and the state Postal Savings Bank while he was on the Interpol list.

Christodoulos' 'spiritual child'

In a statement issued on February 8, the archdiocese categorically denied that Christodoulos had sent anyone to help elect Eirinaios. Spokesmen for the archbishop defended his recommendation for Vavylis, in which Christodoulos praised his "Christian ethos" and "Greekness", indicating that it was written in 1987, one year before the trial and conviction and suggesting that Christodoulos had broken ties with Vavylis.

But Abbott George Kapsanis of Mount Athos' Grigoriou Monastery told ERA state radio on February 10 that Christodoulos personally called him to receive Vavylis for confession and spiritual guidance in 1998, when he was already a wanted man. The abbott proceeded to give Vavylis another letter of recommendation.

The Jerusalem Patriarchate's Archbishop Alexios of Gaza told state TV that Christodoulos met with Eirinaios and Vavylis at an Athens hotel in 2001 and instructed Vavylis to go to Jerusalem to help elect Eirinaios, describing the mission as one to promote "national interests".

Christodoulos' spokesman, Father Epiphanios Economou, told the Athens News that the archbishop has not seen Vavylis since 1987 and that the recommendation was made at the request of his parents - "respectable citizens of Volos" - as part of Christodoulos' pastoral duties.

A VPRC poll showed that Christodoulos' negative ratings were 47 percent, versus 43 percent positive, a nose-dive since May 2004, when his positive ratings were at 68 percent.

Eirinaios, whom Vavylis accuses of having formed a "criminal group" to defame his rivals for the patriarchal throne through illegal means, denies that Vavylis ever worked for him and attributed the allegations to a plot to harm the patriarchate. But evidence has emerged that in 2002 Vavylis was part of a Jerusalem Patriarchate mission to the Vatican, where he went as "Rev Fr Rafaele Apostolos Anagnostakis".

But Greece's consul-general in Jerusalem at the time, Petros Panagiotopoulos, told state TV that Vavylis was so close an aide to the patriarch that one had to go through him to speak with Eirinaios. Panagiotopoulos said he expressed reservations about Vavylis to Eirinaios, who said he could do nothing because Vavylis was Christodoulos' "spiritual child".

There has been speculation in the Greek press that Vavylis was a secret service agent of Greece, Israel, or both.

Gag the clergy

The public uproar has led to mounting calls for the separation of church and state, from politicians ranging from Pasok leader George Papandreou and Left Coalition leader Alekos Alavanos to prominent conservative politicians like Ioannis Varvitsiotis. But the government so far categorically rejects such a prospect.

But the crisis has also led the church to hunker down and prohibit clergy from speaking publicly about church scandals.

"The Holy Synod decided that after the creation of a three-bishop investigative committee, to which anyone possessing legal evidence against clergy can submit it for review, it is no longer useful for clergy to participate in public discussions on church improprieties on television, radio or other mass media, except with the special order of the Holy Synod," read the synod's official communique on February 8.

The move raised questions about the church's determination to achieve transparency amidst an avalanche of accusation of judicial and sexual improprieties committed by priests and bishops.

Allegations run rampant

On the same day, the 12-member synod, chaired and controlled by Christodoulos, also cleared the archbishop's close associate, Metropolitan Theoklitos of Thessaliotis, of charges that he had been arrested by police at Trikala bar on suspicion of drug dealing, along with a priest, Seraphim Koulousousas, who resigned recently as director of Christodoulos' office.

Nonetheless, the synod, after it had dismissed all charges, complied with Theoklitos' request to appoint a bishop to investigate the case. The synod ignored the fact that Theoklitos had used a false Piraeus address to try a slander suit there, where the case was heard by a judge implicated in the ongoing judicial scandal.

Theoklitos' lawyer, Alexis Kouyias, told the Athens News that the bishop simply followed the advice of his previous counsel, who was also Christodoulos' lawyer. Kouyias said that the address was chosen because it was the residence of the court secretary, even though the bishop did not know her.

In an effort to bolster his position and build alliances, Christodoulos met with key members of the church hierarchy on February 9 to seek ways to surpass the crisis. The meeting was attended by Christodoulos main rival for the archbishop's throne in 1998, Ieronymos of Thebes.

Ieronymos reportedly pledged support on the condition that Christodoulos would clear his name of charges of financial malfeasance that were raised before the archbishop's election, and of which he was cleared by a Greek court. Christodoulos is expected to call a meeting of all Greece's bishops by month's end.

Meanwhile, the Greek Supreme Court proceeded with further prosecutions against judges, filing charges against lower court president Evangelos Kalousis, who is accused of exploiting foreign women as prostitutes. He allegedly lured the women through newspaper ads and kept only those over 1.80m tall.

The seventh Greek judge facing expulsion, Kalousis was arrested on February 10 after allegedly trying to cash a bad check in a bank. Kalousis claimed he had found the check on the street and was merely trying to ascertain if it was authentic.

A deputy appellate court prosecutor, Nikos Athanasopoulos, who is accused of having participated with priest Iakovos Giosakis in a judicial ring rigging cases, claimed that he was drawn in and deceived by the priest.

ATHENS NEWS , 11/02/2005, page: A05
Article code: C13117A051

----------------------------------------------------
They say that I am bad news. They say "Stay Away."

User avatar
尼古拉前执事
Archon
Posts: 5118
Joined: Thu 24 October 2002 7:01 pm
Faith: Eastern Orthodox
Jurisdiction: Non-Phylitist
Location: Euless, TX, United States of America
Contact:

Sex and fraud woe for Greek church

Post by 尼古拉前执事 »

Sex and fraud woe for Greek church
19 February 2005 07:57

Greece's Orthodox church, buffeted by sex and corruption scandals, met in emergency session on Friday amid lurid claims that have included one newspaper publishing photographs of a 91-year-old bishop naked in bed with a nubile young woman.

Scrambling to resolve the worst crisis in the church's modern history, the embattled spiritual leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, convened the rare meeting as allegations of skulduggery, sexual improprieties, trial rigging, drug and antiquities smuggling engulfed the institution.

"I humbly ask for forgiveness from the people and the clerics who, for the most, honour... the cassock they wear," he said addressing the 102-member Holy Synod, the church's ruling council.

"There is a lot that must be done to put our house in order," he conceded before proposing a series of reforms.

Greeks have watched dumbfounded as allegations of their priesthood's dissolute lifestyle have unfolded on their television screens.

Snatched tape-recordings, aired nightly, have revealed rampant homosexuality among senior clerics who, unlike ordinary priests, are under oaths of chastity.

The alleged debauchery has not been limited to monastic cells. Last week, claims emerged that Metropolitan Theoklitos of Thessaly, a leading churchman, had been arrested on suspicion of drug dealing in a police raid on a notorious nightclub in Athens.

The priest was reportedly rounded up with Seraphim Koulousousas, the archbishop's former private secretary, also implicated in another "unholy affair" involving homosexual sex with a bishop.

In a setback for Archbishop Christodoulos, Koulousousas announced this week that he was leaving the church to embark on a career as a fashion designer in Paris.

The Greek Orthodox church sees homosexuality as an "abomination," with the archbishop recently describing it as a "blatant, crying sin".

The revelations follow the suspension of two high-ranking clerics for "ethical misconduct" earlier this month.

Metropolitan Panteleimon of Attica, who headed Greece's richest diocese, was withdrawn from duties after allegations of "lewd exchanges with young men" and charges that he had embezzled around €4,4-million for "his old age."

The bishop is one of several eminent priests whose names have been linked in a widening trial-fixing and corruption scandal involving at least 20 judges currently under investigation.

In the wake of suggestions by fellow members of the synod that he resign, Panteleimon's reaction was less than charitable. "If I speak, there will be an earthquake. I'll take many with me to my grave."

Earlier this month, Archimandrite Iakovos Giosakis was also suspended after being charged with antiquities smuggling following the disappearance of valuable icons from his former diocese.

Under public pressure from a media determined to expose the shenanigans, the church is investigating four more clerics, including a 91-year-old metropolitan bishop who was captured on camera cavorting in the nude with a young woman. The picture was splashed across the front page of the mass-selling Avriani.

"It is true that some of us have sinned, mistakes have been made," the synod's spokesperson admitted. "There is clearly a need for catharsis."

But with the revelations showing no sign of abating, Greeks were doubtful on Friday whether the clean-up would go far enough. Although Archbishop Christodoulos appeared unusually contrite, he stopped short of chastising his own role in the growing furore.

In yet another embarrassing twist, the fiery leader has been accused of procuring the services of a convicted drug smuggler, Apostolos Vavylis, to help elect a favoured cleric to the post of patriarch of Jerusalem in 2001. Investigations have shown that the archbishop wrote a recommendation letter for Vavylis months before he was arrested smuggling heroin.

"A tsunami is coming and it will reach the archbishop himself," predicted Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos, a noted liberal.

Unsurprisingly, the allegations have severely dented the reputation of the church in a country where 97% are baptised Orthodox. Unlike its Roman Catholic counterpart, the Greek Orthodox faith stresses the infallibility of its 11 000-strong priesthood as a whole. Greeks, in contrast to other Europeans, intrinsically link their national identity to their religion, viewing the church as the vehicle that kept Hellenism alive during 400 years of dark Ottoman rule.

But, this week, for the first time ever the vast majority told pollsters they would support the full separation of church-state relations.

"What all of this has confirmed is that corruption is not limited to the public sector," said Thanos Dokas, a political scientist.

"Despite widespread evidence that these sort of things were happening, its leadership was always reluctant to deal with them.

"For the last 150 years, the church has had a leading role in a country... now it is fighting a rearguard battle to maintain its grip on Greek society." - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

User avatar
尼古拉前执事
Archon
Posts: 5118
Joined: Thu 24 October 2002 7:01 pm
Faith: Eastern Orthodox
Jurisdiction: Non-Phylitist
Location: Euless, TX, United States of America
Contact:

Greek State Church scandals hit Chicago, Illinois in America

Post by 尼古拉前执事 »

Strange dealings at a Greek church in Chicago

http://www.orthodoxnews.netfirms.com/160/Statio.htm
Published by the Chicago Tribune, February 20, 2005

Priest jailed in Greece left church here adrift
Scandal follows cleric on run from embezzlement charge

By Russell Working and Dan Mihalopoulos
Tribune staff reporters

Watching satellite TV news reports from the old country at their homes in
Chicago, members of a Greek Orthodox parish on the Northwest Side were
shocked to recognize the young, bearded priest in police custody.

It was their former pastor, Iakovos Giosakis, who disappeared almost four
years ago after they accused him of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars
from the parish.

Before finding himself at the center of a growing scandal involving sex,
drugs, trial-fixing and trafficking in precious icons, Giosakis served Sts.
Athanasios and John Church in Chicago for about two years. He fled the
country days after Chicago police seized a computer, church financial
records and personal documents in a raid of the apartment where he lived as
the guest of an elderly parishioner.

The priest's arrest Feb. 4 in the Athens port of Piraeus rocked a country
where Orthodoxy is the state religion and almost everyone is baptized into
the faith.

Now jailed in Athens, Giosakis is charged with stealing Byzantine icons
from a monastery on a Greek island. He is also under investigation in a
corruption case in which judges are accused of fixing trials involving drug
dealers and church elections.

The church suspended a high-ranking cleric after a Greek TV station aired a
recording of a phone conversation between him and his male lover, and a
91-year-old bishop allegedly appeared naked with a young woman in a
published photo.

On Friday, the church's leader in Greece, Metropolitan Christodoulos of
Athens, apologized to the nation for the scandal as senior clerics opened
an emergency conclave to impose reforms.

As the scandals dominate the Greek media, the faithful in Chicago again
regret having trusted Giosakis with offering plates, cash from church
fundraisers and loans for church construction.

"In the beginning, people couldn't even believe it," said Theodoros Mantas,
the lay president of the church. "But after we saw the [bank] statements,
then we started to believe that Father Giosakis wasn't very good."

Early disputes

Born to a pious Orthodox family, Giosakis served as an altar boy in Piraeus
before becoming a priest. He served a string of churches in his
Mediterranean homeland, twice leaving his posts after disputes with
parishioners, according to Vima, a leading newspaper in Athens.

After being accused of stealing icons on the island of Kythera, Giosakis
resurfaced in the United States. Metropolitan Athenagoras, the Greek
Orthodox archbishop for Central America and the Caribbean, agreed to take
responsibility for him in 1999. Athenagoras, who grew up in Chicago, said
he did so "out of the goodness of my heart."

"I made a mistake in judgment to help someone who was not worthy of my
help," Athenagoras said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. "All I
wanted was to do some good."

At that time, Athenagoras said, he did not know the extent of the problems
that plagued Giosakis in Greece.

Those problems also were unknown to the congregation of Sts. Athanasios and
John when he arrived in 1999. Sts. Athanasios and John is a small church
where 50 to 60 people attend the Divine Liturgy every Sunday. The Irving
Park church is separate from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America,
which oversees practically every other parish in the Chicago area, and
instead operates under the oversight of a monastery in New York.

Only Greek is heard in liturgies at the church, unlike many Greek Orthodox
churches in the United States, where English is becoming as common as
Greek. Many of the parishioners are elderly immigrants.

"The church is a very small, humble, modest place of worship," parishioner
Alexander Facklis said. "It's wonderful for those who are seeking a more
personal, spiritual experience."

The arrival of a new priest energized the parish, Facklis said. Bearded,
5-foot-8 and about 250 pounds, he was a charismatic man whose congregation
came to admire him so much that some of them wanted to fly to Istanbul with
him and urge the Patriarch--the church's supreme leader--to promote him to
bishop.

"He's very intelligent and likable," Facklis said. "We all fell for that
charisma. Clergy in the Greek community are given a large dose of automatic
respect, and he was very eloquent in stating big plans."

Suspicions grew

But some parishioners quickly became suspicious of their new priest,
according to parishioners, police and the search warrant used to raid the
apartment.

Giosakis immediately took control of the church. He dismissed the church
officers and appointed his own. And he took possession of the church bank
ledgers, computer and printer, which were used for fundraising and bill
payments.

Personal money problems seemed to dog the priest in Chicago. On two
occasions, Mantas said, Giosakis claimed sums of at least $10,000 had been
stolen from him. Parishioners made up for the money.

Another time, a bishop visited from New York, and the church held a
fundraising dinner and dance, selling 300 tickets for $100 apiece. But the
receipts came in somewhere between $4,000-$6,000 short, Mantas said.

Church members accepted Giosakis' explanation that he must have lost the
money. But some began to worry that the priest was in charge of the Sunday
offering.

"There were some members of the church that were arguing," Mantas said.
"They had questions: The priest shouldn't get the money.' But most of us,
including myself, were saying,
Everything's just fine. I trust him. And
when everything gets ready, the money will be there.'"

He also allegedly told church members that he was supposed to be paid $500
a week for his work, although police would later state that he entered the
country as a volunteer on a visa that did not permit him to work for a salary.

In April 2001, Giosakis called for a $240,000 remodeling project at the
church, Mantas said. He proposed using fine oak to refurbish the interior
and extending a fountain out in front. And he wanted to add a Jacuzzi in a
basement under the altar. This struck Mantas as odd, but he shrugged it off.

"I have a Jacuzzi in my house," Mantas said. "I said, `What the hell.'"

Giosakis allegedly talked one elderly parishioner into giving him $57,000,
saying it was needed for the poor, his sick mother and a friend in
financial trouble, according to the search warrant. He wired most of the
money to Greece, the warrant stated.

"Usually they were elderly people who put their trust in him," said Chicago
Police Sgt. Diego Flores, who investigated the case.

In addition, five members of the church agreed to put up $12,000 apiece to
guarantee $60,000 the church borrowed. The money was placed in a
construction checking account at Plaza Bank, said Mantas, who was among the
five.

Two signatures were required in order to move money from church accounts,
but Giosakis allegedly talked a bank official into allowing him to control
the money with his signature alone, according to the warrant. Funds were
transferred to his personal account, and Giosakis allegedly wrote out
several checks for "cash."

Within one week in May he withdrew a total of $18,500 in two transactions,
Mantas said.

Officials at Plaza Bank declined to comment, saying disclosure restrictions
prevent them from even confirming that the church or the priest had
accounts there.

But Mantas said he eventually became suspicious, examined the ledgers and
confronted the priest at a meeting in late May.

"When I asked him why the money wasn't there, he told me he took the money
out because his mother was sick," Mantas said. "I asked him when his mother
got sick. He told me his mother got sick on the 22nd of May. And then the
other question for me was, how did he know his mother would be sick on the
22nd, when he got the money out on the 10th and the 16th?"

Leader flees

Congregational leaders reported their suspicions to their church's
supervisors at St. Irene Chrysovalantou monastery, in Astoria, N.Y. The
monastery suspended Giosakis from his duties and told the parishioners to
call the Chicago police.

On June 28, 2001, investigators--tipped off by a church officer that
Giosakis planned to flee the country the next day--raided the apartment
where he lived in the 8500 block of West Rascher Avenue. Police took
computer parts, printers, bank records, raffle tickets, a plane ticket, two
passports and $2,500 in cash.

Although Giosakis was left with no passport, he went to the Greek Consulate
and obtained another, Flores said.

The question of how Giosakis fled and found a new ecclesiastical position
in Greece has become a point of contention in the church. Patriarch
Bartholomew, the supreme leader of all Orthodox Christians, chastised
Athenagoras, the Central American archbishop, for helping Giosakis land his
assignment in Chicago. In a 2002 letter from the patriarch to Athenagoras,
Bartholomew also criticized the archbishop for accepting funds from
Giosakis, defending the cleric before Chicago police and helping him flee
Chicago.

But Athenagoras insists he did not hear from Giosakis until he was in
Greece again. Athenagoras acknowledged traveling to Chicago to discuss the
case with police, but he said he accepted only a single $3,000 donation
from the priest while he was his bishop.

Devastating tenure

In the wake of the scandal, the monastery has sought to distance itself
from Giosakis.

"When he was in Chicago he was also on loan to us," said John Kotsaridis,
secretary and administrator of St. Irene Chrysovalantou. "He wasn't a
priest of the monastery."

About a year ago, Sts. Athanasios and John asked the police to drop the
case, Flores said. Members said it was time to move on from the
controversy, he said.

The impact of Giosakis' tenure in Chicago was devastating for believers,
Facklis said. The church was shuttered for a couple months after Giosakis
left, but it revived with the help of a temporary priest from the St. Louis
area.

"I don't want to call it a death blow, but it was close to it," Facklis
said. "He created some serious divisions. Some who supported him have never
set foot in the church again. I don't think that the community deserved it
or could do anything about it."

User avatar
TomS
Protoposter
Posts: 1010
Joined: Wed 4 June 2003 8:26 pm
Location: Maryland

‘As the hypocrites do...’

Post by TomS »

COMMENTARIES

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_ar ... 2005_53530

‘As the hypocrites do...’
By Pantelis Boukalas

We should not be surprised at the ease with which Archbishop Christodoulos, in his bid to defend himself, went on to identify His Beatitude with the Church, religion and the nation. Politicians use similar defensive tactics when they find themselves under fire; particularly those who, swayed by sycophants, believe they have won people’s eternal respect.

Early in his tenure, when PASOK was still in government, Christodoulos did not seem to feel uncomfortable when a deputy, looking to the votes of the faithful, welcomed him saying, “Behold, the Bridegroom comes in daylight,” shamelessly equating him with the Bridegroom of the Orthodox tradition. The signs of vanity were already there to be seen.

Furthermore, we should not be surprised at the applause and the cheers. Out of place as these secular expressions of approval may appear to be in a space inviting devout silence and respect, they are already common practice. Besides, the clergy seem familiar with all things unholy, including partisanship and narcissism.

Finally, we should not be surprised by the fact that the archbishop, in his recent public appearances, has distanced himself from the Bible. If politicians identify themselves with the country, then clerics identify themselves with the nation. “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father, which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have the glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth” (Matthew, Chapter 6).

True, the Gospel forbids self-trumpeting “in the synagogues and in the streets.” It says nothing about the Church or television.

----------------------------------------------------
They say that I am bad news. They say "Stay Away."

Post Reply