The Shepherd, November 2004

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NEWS SECTION

BAPTISM AT BROOKWOOD

THE ECCLESIASTICAL CANONS enjoin that when a See falls vacant a hierarch must be appointed without delay, and the ancient Church of Alexandria has been faithful to this precept. On 9th October, Patriarch Theodore II was elected as the 116th Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, succeeding Patriarch Petros VII, who was killed in a helicopter crash in September. The new Patriarch is fifty years of age, and was born in Crete, where he served as a parish priest. In 2002, he was appointed Metropolitan of Zimbabwe, and in 1997 Metropolitan of Cameroon. The election, by thirteen Metropolitans from across Africa, took place in the Church of St Savvas in Alexandria, and His Beatitude was solemnly enthroned on 24th October.

A NUMBER of news items sadly indicate that Ecumenism is taking on a new lease of life within the worldwide Œcuemnical Patriarchate. An agreement between the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and the Patriarchate of Constantinople was reached in early October, with each party recognising the other’s members as baptised. This is not only contrary to the Apostolic Canons, but shows the Œcumenical Patriarchate acting unilaterally without consulting her Sister Churches.

In Mexico, the Dalai Lama participated in an inter-faith religious service in the National Cathedral, saying that he was “tremendously happy” to be sharing the altar of the old metropolitan cathedral. Listed as “participating” in the inter-faith service of prayer were Catholic, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Morman representatives. The EFE News Service report states: “Also on hand were representatives of Mexico’s Hindu Community and Sufi Islam.” It appears that they were more reticent to participate in this syncretistic service than were those, the “Greek Orthodox” among them, who should be professing that Christ alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

ON 7th OCTOBER it was reported that a home-made bomb was lobbed over the wall of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul. The device blew out several windows and damaged the roof of the Cathedral, but fortunately no one was injured. It is thought that the attack was the work of extreme nationalists, who oppose the Patriarchate’s remaining in the city.

THE PARTICIPANTS in the recent Council of Hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate are reported to have been understandably astonished by a demand by the Patriarchate of Constantinople that they end direct contact with the Holy Mountain Athos. Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad stated that “The monastic republic, although it is under the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, simultaneously possesses the rights of autonomy fixed in international agreements.” He reminded participants of the Council that for centuries Orthodox of many nations have had communities on the Holy Mountain, and that the Russian presence there dates back to the tenth century. He spoke of recent difficulties which had been put in the way of Russians wishing to be accepted into the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon on Athos. He said that they had now been asked even to curtail correspondence with St Panteleimon’s.

BECAUSE OF THE FRAILTY of his health, Pope John Paul II has declined an invitation to visit the Œcumenical Patriarchate at Istanbul, but he agreed to return the sacred relics of two of Orthodoxy’s greatest saints, St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian to the Patriarchate. These relics disappeared after the Crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204 A.D., and have been kept in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. They are to be returned to Constantinople in time for the festival of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called (n.s.), a festival which is kept with great solemnly there, because St Stachys, the first bishop of Byzantium, (the town which was to become Constantinople, and is now Istanbul) was consecrated by St Andrew.

THREE HIERARCHS of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Abraham, Archbishop Grogori and Bishop Zenon have addressed a plea to their Catholicos-Patriarch, Ilya II, not only accusing Russia of aggression against Georgia because of recent events in North Ossetia, but also accusing the Moscow Patriarchate of “anticanonical actions” on the territory of the Georgian Church. They ask the Catholicos “to evaluate recent tragic events in Abhazia and Tskhinvalsky region and the involvement of Moscow’s patriarchy in them.” The exact nature of their worries is not made clear, but it appears that they consider that the Moscow Patriarchate is perhaps still too much a tool of the Russian state.

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