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Just a few months after news broke about the Vatopedi land-swap scandal, the Supreme Court prosecutor this weekend called for an investigation into another suspicious exchange between the Orthodox Church and the state.

Giorgos Sanidas ordered a preliminary investigation into the transfer of a prime piece of land on the Aegean island of Skyros to a Mount Athos monastery and the purchase by the Greek state, allegedly at an excessive price, of a much smaller plot belonging to the monastery.

Sanidas wants an Athens prosecutor to determine whether the monastery’s acquisition of the 3,700-hectare plot on Skyros should lead to any individuals being charged with defrauding the state. He notes that the court rulings relating to the land transfer “were the result of misleading evidence and testimonies” and therefore are “unlawful.”

Thessaloniki court decided yesterday that a priest and three members of an ecclesiastical council should stand trial on charges that they tricked a cancer sufferer into making the Orthodox Church a gift of a half a million euros shortly before his death.

The court heard that in the days preceding the 82-year-old’s death, his health had deteriorated and, as a result of the heavy medication he was receiving, often did not recognize people nor was he able to speak coherently.
Nine days before he died, the man allegedly appeared at his local bank with the priest and three church officials to withdraw the money. Bank employees told the court that the 82-year-old appeared confused and had to be reminded he was withdrawing 500,000 euros, not drachmas.

The man’s widow launched the action against the four men, who, along with a fifth person, will stand trial for fraud.

 

Suspects in the Vatopedi scandal, which has troubled the government since last year, are set to face charges for six felonies and three misdemeanors in connection with claims that a land exchange between the state and the Mount Athos monastery was weighted heavily in favor of the monks.

Chief appeals prosecutor Kyriakos Karoutsos yesterday issued the charges against “all persons responsible,” a catch-all legal term. Magistrate Eirini Kalou will now have to decide exactly who will be charged.

The six felonies that Karoutsos identified are breach of faith to the detriment of the state, joint breach of faith to the detriment of the state, making false declarations to the detriment of the state, money laundering, as well as instigation of these acts or direct involvement in them.

The three misdemeanors that he ascertained are breach of duty, illegal transfer of property rights attaching to a monument and violation of building regulations.

Karoutsos also decided that 33 official legal advisers to the state and seven senior monks at Vatopedi should not face prosecution because there is not enough evidence to suggest any wrongdoing.

A total of 62 people were questioned as suspects during the long judicial investigation into the case. So, 22 of them could still face charges after Kalou has finished her probe.

The possibility of any politicians facing charges disappeared after a parliamentary committee that looked into the case last year failed to arrive at a common conclusion over whether members of the government had intentionally set up the deal to favor the monastery at the expense of taxpayers. Nevertheless, last October then government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos resigned after he had been implicated in the scandal even though he denied any wrongdoing. Last month, the outgoing Supreme Court prosecutor Giorgos Sanidas prevented the case file being resubmitted to Parliament, insisting that no new evidence implicating any politicians had been uncovered.

 

Archbishop Ieronymos is seen emerging from a jail for young offenders in Avlona, northern Attica, yesterday. The archbishop, who visited the institution with Justice Minister Nikos Dendias, distributed Easter candles and ‘tsoureki,’ a traditional sweet bread, to the inmates and told them a ‘second chance’ awaited them upon their release. ‘We all make mistakes; the point is to learn from them,’ he told the youngsters.

 

 

Archbishop Ieronymos has reiterated the Church’s demand for compulsory religion lessons in schools in a letter to Education and Religion Minister Aris Spiliotopoulos, ministry sources said yesterday.

The main focus of the archbishop’s letter is reportedly a request for the hiring of some 4,000 unemployed theology school graduates. Ieronymos is reported to have asked for them to be appointed as teachers in schools or as guides on “religious tourism” tours and in museums displaying ecclesiastical relics.

A Holy Synod source said, “We are sorry that certain ministry officials... are bothered by the Church’s established stance on religion lessons and not by the chronic problem of unemployment faced by thousands of theologians.” Spiliotopoulos said he would consider the archbishop’s request once he had read the letter.

An investigation into the finances of the Church of Greece’s nongovernmental organization Solidarity has revealed that 13 million euros are missing, sources revealed yesterday. The development came one day after a senior cleric at the Bishopric of Attica sent Archbishop Ieronymos his resignation in protest at a decision by the Holy Synod not to make the jailed former bishop of Attica, Panteleimon, face a Church court.

The abbot of Aghia Skepi Monastery in Keratea, east of Athens, has been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing at least 21 novice monks over the last two decades, police said yesterday.

The 68-year-old was taken into custody after four men aged 18 to 34 went to a police station in Keratea and told officers that the monk repeatedly abused them between 1988 and 2007 while they were at the monastery.

They claimed that the abbot took advantage of the spiritual trust that his novices placed in him. Police said that an initial investigation had indicated that the 68-year-old sexually molested at least 17 other young men.

The abbot appeared before a magistrate yesterday but asked for, and was granted, more time to prepare his defense. First instance prosecutor Eleni Raikou gave authorization for the name of the suspect, Eleftherios Anastasopoulos, to be published.

Anastasopoulos will not be charged for all the alleged attacks, such as the ones said to have taken place in 1988, due to the statute of limitations.

 

As revelers prepare to wheel out a float satirizing a senior monk at the heart of the Vatopedi land exchange scandal this weekend for the culmination of Carnival celebrations in the central port of Patras, clerics say the effigy is an unfair blow against all priests.

“It is an affront to the clergy, to the Church, to Orthodoxy,” said Timotheos Papastavrou, a member of a local religious group that appealed for the float to be banned. “Does a child who attends the parade know Ephraim or what he did? He just sees the clergy being ridiculed,” he added.

Thessaloniki’s outspoken Bishop Anthimos said the float’s inclusion in the parade was “a very grave mistake.”

Patras’s Deputy Mayor Alexis Skarmeas defended the move. “Our intention is not to offend the Church but to satirize and not condemn a particular individual for specific activities with political ramifications.”

 

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