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 The head of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos, will attend a service in Kiev on Sunday despite threats by the Russian Orthodox Church that it could split from the Ecumenical Patriarchate over possible recognition of the Ukrainian Church.

The service in Kiev, held to mark 1,020 years since the Christianization of the Russians, has taken on an air of controversy after Russian Patriarch Alexy II launched a verbal attack against the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios.

Vartholomaios responded yesterday by sending a letter to Alexy calling his remarks “insulting.”

Alexy had called for Orthodox leaders to boycott the service in Kiev but, in a vote held by Greece’s Holy Synod yesterday, it was decided by 11 votes in favor to one against that Ieronymos should go. He will be accompanied by the bishops of Chios and Preveza.

 

Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios l and Pope Benedict XVI appealed for Christian unity yesterday during a joint mass at St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Vartholomaios said that dialogue between the two branches of Christianity is continuing, despite 'numerous difficulties.'

Archbishop Ieronymos yesterday condemned “isolated nationalist outbursts... that do not serve the interests of the Church” in an apparent dig at Bishop Anthimos who has been outspoken on the Macedonia name dispute.

“Such phenomena endanger and undermine the viability and the serious nature of our positions,” Ieronymos said. Thessaloniki’s Bishop Anthimos, a vocal critic of perceived expansionism by the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), has intensified his objections in recent months as Skopje and Athens fail to see eye to eye on the name dispute. “We will never accept the name Macedonia going to the neighboring country, which has stolen and usurped it,” Anthimos remarked last month.

In a related development, the Holy Synod elected three new bishops: Archimandrite Theophilos Manolatos was elected bishop of Lefkada, the See of Thebes was granted to the head monk of the local Osios Loukas Monastery and Archimandrite Kallinikos Demenopoulos was elected bishop of Paronaxia (Paros, Naxos and Antiparos).

Today the Greek government deployed hundreds of armed police to forcibly remove the monks of the Holy Monastery of Esphigmenou from their monastery.  Under the leadership of foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis, all roads to the monastery have been sealed off and over 200 police in full riot gear are on Mt. Athos , with an additional 400 police deploying to assist in the pending assault.  Their expressed plan is to forcibly remove the peaceful and defenseless monks and their long-standing Abbot Methodios from their monastery, and replace them with those who pray in accordance with the dictates of the Greek government. 

The government has authorized the use of force to resolve a religious dispute after failing to starve the monks into leaving their monastery during a 5-year blockade. In this time, they have denied the monks deliveries of food, medicine, heating oil, and access to medical attention while simultaneously subjecting them to a non-stop campaign of official harassment and intimidation. 

The local Greek prosecutor, Vasilis Floridis, has destroyed the livelihood of these peaceful monks who seek to be left alone to pray in their monastery.  Last week Floridis sent a letter to senior government officials calling the monks a "national threat" and demanding their removal.  This is the same prosecutor who in October 2006 threatened "grave consequences" to anyone who dared raise their voice to protest these actions. 

The monks have repeatedly requested dialogue with the Greek government as well as Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul to resolve this dispute. The Patriarch, who has declared the monks "schismatic," has refused to aid in the peaceful reconciliation of this dispute. 

For the last five years, the U.S. Government has cited Greece for its treatment of the Esphigmenou monks in its International Religious Freedom Report issued by the Department of State.

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The head of Greece's Church was responding to comments by FYROM's Archbishop Stephan. He had suggested over the weekend that Thessaloniki was the Balkan country's heartland.

«That's what happens when people exceed their role,» Ieronymos said. «The Church is supposed to unite people.»

Sources close to the archbishop said the comment was also aimed at critics in the Church of Greece who feel that Ieronymos is not as active as he should be in foreign affairs. Earlier this year, he made it clear he was against the Church's involvement in gatherings to protest the name dispute with Greece's northern neighbor.

His position was applauded yesterday by PASOK leader George Papandreou, who said he was in full agreement with Ieronymos's view on the separation of Church and state.

The women and a man, all from Moldova, were spotted by monks after reaching the area in a speedboat from Turkey.

The immigrants, aged between 27 and 41, said they had crossed over into Greece from the Turkish coast and did not realize they had been left on the monastic peninsula.

They told police they each paid 4,000 euros to two Ukrainian smugglers for the transfer from the Turkish port of Canakkale.

Authorities were combing the area yesterday searching for more illegal immigrants who may have reached the peninsula.

Woman are prohibited from entering Mount Athos, a monastic community dating back to 10th century.

The ban is upheld by Greece’s Constitution and violations are punishable by up to a year in prison.

The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios (left), arrived in Greece yesterday for a four-day visit and talks with Archbishop Ieronymos (right). ‘In your venerable person, we have always discerned the good shepherd, the honest servant of the Church, the eminent theologist and scientist, the open-minded individual,’ Ieronymos told the visiting patriarch. Vartholomaios is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and President Karolos Papoulias.

The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios, and the head of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos, conducted a service together in Istanbul yesterday and pledged to work more closely.

Ieronymos has used his first official trip to the Patriarchate since becoming archbishop earlier this year to resolve past differences and place relations between the two churches on a new footing.

“We are brothers, united by a common faith and tradition,” said Vartholomaios yesterday. Ieronymos indicated a willingness to operate largely in the ecumenical patriarch’s shadow. “We have nothing to offer you other than the devotion that children can offer to their parents,” he said.

Ieronymos’s predecessor, Christodoulos, had often clashed with Vartholomaios over Church matters.

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