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The Editor: Pan
Drakopoulos
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2 Οκτώβριος 2002
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NEWS Αρχιεπίσκοπος:
Η πνευματική κληρονομιά των Μικρασιατών Ελλήνων ως αρρήκτως
συνδεδεμένη με την παράδοσιν της Ορθοδόξου Εκκλησίας Μιλώντας στην Ημερίδα της Ιεράς
Συνόδου για τα 80 χρόνια της Μικρασιατικής Καταστροφής, ο
Αρχιεπίσκοπος κ. Χριστόδουλος είπε μεταξύ άλλων: «Συνιστά
αναμφισβήτητη ιστορική πραγματικότητα ότι η Εκκλησία αγωνίστηκε
και επέτυχε να διατηρήσει την αυτοσυνειδησία του γένους. Όσο και να διαστρέφουν την
ιστορία οι εχθροί της
Ορθοδοξίας, όσο και να προσπαθούν να σβύσουν το ρόλο της
Εκκλησίας και τους
δεσμούς της με το γένος, δεν θα κατορθώσουν να κάνουν αυτό που και
οι Οθωμανοί δεν το μπόρεσαν: να βγάλουν τον παπά από τη μέση. Όσο
και να προσπαθήσουν, δεν θα μπορέσουν να ανατρέψουν ένα γεγονός:
τα σπάργανα του νέου Ελληνισμού φτιάχτηκαν από
ράσο.» Πλήρες
κείμενο:
http://www.ecclesia.gr/greek/archbishop/hellenism/Minor_Asia.html Ecumenical
Patriarch in Athens
Orthodox
Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos arrived in Athens on Sunday 29 of
September for a two days visit. Archbishop of Athens and All Greece
Christodoulos has given a dinner in honour of him. Upon his arrival,
Vartholomeos expressed his pleasure to be back in Athens, saying
that there was a spiritual umbilical cord between the Holy See of
Constantinople and the Church of Greece. Archbishop
Christodoulos, who met the Patriarch at Athens airport at the head
of a Holy Synod delegation, expressed the satisfaction and joy of
the Church of Greece for the Patriarch's visit.
Vartholomeos
has a busy schedule of engagements in Athens before his departure on
Wednesday, including meetings with the country's state and political
leadership. President
Clerides visits ailing Archbishop of
Cyprus
President
Glafcos Clerides paid a visit to the primate of the Church of Cyprus
Archbishop Chrysostomos, who is recovering from a bad fall in April,
having received medical treatment in Athens over the past few
months. ''The
Archbishop is in a good mood and I hope, as time passes by, the
decision to bring him back to his own surroundings will prove to be
the right one,'' Health Minister Frixos Savides, who accompanied
President Clerides at the Archbishopric for the visit, said
afterwards. SYNDESMOS Jubilee Assembly
2003 to take place in Albania
The
Board of Administration of SYNDESMOS, the World Fellowship of
Orthodox Youth, has accepted the invitation of Archbishop Anastasios
of Tirana and all Albania to host its upcoming XVIIth
General Assembly at the Theological Academy and St Vlash Monastery
near Dürres, Albania. The Assembly, which will mark the
50th anniversary of the Fellowship, will be held from 14
– 21 July 2003. Earlier options studied by the Board were Romania,
Poland and Greece. “There
is great symbolic value to this choice,”
says Hildo Bos, the Acting President of the Fellowship. “From its
very outset, mission has been a key focus of SYNDESMOS. It was
within SYNDESMOS that Archbishop Anastasios began the missionary
endeavour that would take him to Africa and, ultimately, to the head
of the reviving Church of Albania. His invitation – the invitation
of the head of a local Church! – shows the fruits of this vision to
a new generation in SYNDESMOS. This occasion is a gift of grace that
will guide the Fellowship into the new half-century of its
existence.” SYNDESMOS
General secretariat: PO
Box 66051, 15510 Holargos Greece
syndesmos@syndesmos.org www.syndesmos.org FEATURES
Letter from Belgrade and Novi Sad
Scraps from Spyros Payiatakis report in E-Kathimerini, 30 September 2002 During
my stay in Belgrade last week, on Tuesday, September 24 precisely,
the permanent synod of the Church of Serbia took a most important
decision: to appoint as exarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Bishop
Jovan of Veles, in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
(FYROM). Last
July, Bishop Jovan, who has a black belt in karate and is based in
Bitola in FYROM, was deposed by the country’s — schismatic to us —
“Macedonian” Orthodox Church as a result of his attempt to have his
bishopric join the Serbian Orthodox Church, an action wholeheartedly
accepted by us. He
was also accused of having been “incited” by the Greek Orthodox
Church and was moreover criticized for his frequent visits to
Thessaloniki, where he is studying for his doctorate at the
Aristotle University. As
far as I was concerned, Bishop Irenaios, of Vojvodina, speaking in
perfect Greek, helped that understanding by his calm, lucid and
dispassionate account of an issue that has long been a contentious
issue: the status of the “Macedonian” church. This is a dispute that
is becoming acrimonious again. I
visited him last Wednesday in the ornate archbishop’s palace in Novi
Sad, a city which hosts the two principal Christian churches: Serb
Orthodox and Roman Catholic. Encouraged
by the communist authorities, the church in “Macedonia” unilaterally
declared itself autocephalous in 1967. It had not previously enjoyed
autonomous status within the Serbian church, he
said. The
other side, the bishops of FYROM, that is, retort: “This
autocephalous church has existed, first in Prespes and then in
Ohrid, since the time of Tsar Samuel and his descendants as the
spiritual institution of that empire. It was legally strengthened by
the Byzantine Emperor Basil II as an ecumenical Christian
institution immediately after his defeat of Samuel’s state in
1018.” They
also insist “in the 20th century, during the period of the World War
II and the course of the military actions of the struggle for
Macedonian statehood, the Macedonians raised the question of an
autocephalous church. Since the representatives of the Serbian
Orthodox Church were attempting to postpone the solution of the
Macedonian Church question, the delegates to the second
Church-and-People Assembly, held in Ohrid on October 4 and 5, 1958,
passed a decision in favor of the revival of the archbishopric of
Ohrid and of the constitution of the ‘Macedonian’ Orthodox Church.
’ Now,
everyone knows that in Tito’s time, no church, or anyone else, could
take such a decision by itself, unless there was a clear political
reason — in this case, the formation of a “Macedonian”
state. “I
know Bishop Jovan well. He is a good man and I am convinced that his
decision was based solely on theology,” Archbishop Irenaios
said. Last
summer Bishop Jovan, stated: “Some are accusing me of national
treason and that may be so, but as a bishop of the holy church I
cannot place national interests before spiritual ones. While the
church may recognize a nation, that always comes
second.” In
2000, Bishop Jovan was removed from the Bregalnica diocese in FYROM
after his inflexible attitude to ritual and his insistence on
conducting part of the liturgy in Greek upset local
faithfuls. FYIΟ ΦΩΤΗΣ ΚΟΝΤΟΓΛΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΜΑΘΗΤΕΣ ΤΟΥ |
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