The Shepherd, November 2006
NEWS SECTION, 2
PERSECUTION OF ESPHIGMENOU MONKS
A COURT in Thessalonica has given suspended two-year gaol sentences to nine of the 110 Orthodox monks of the Esphigmenou Monastery on the Holy Mountain Athos after finding them guilty of disturbing the peace. The defendants were involved in tussles last December with agents of the hierarchy over plans to set up a “commemorating” monastery of “Esphigmenou.” Monks from the rival house told the court they had asked members of the Esphigmenou brotherhood to leave their monastery peacefully. However, the Esphigmenou monks insisted, through their solicitor, that members of the new brotherhood had no right to be on the premises. The monks of Esphigmenou Monastery are opposing efforts to remove them following a ruling by the country’s top administrative court that their presence there is illegal. The Esphigmenou monks have, since 1972, refused to commemorate the OEcumenical Patriarchs in Istanbul, because of the latter’s ecumenical outreaches towards the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican.
Athanassios Papageorgiou, a former physician at the monastery, told the court that elderly monks were dying without any medical help as a result of the blockade that has been set upon their monastery. He said that outsiders have not been allowed access to the monastery since last year. An eviction order, issued in December 2002, followed the Esphigmenou monks’ persistent refusal to acknowledge the authority of Patriarch Bartholomaios. The monks did try to take a first step in healing the rift earlier this year by writing to Bartholomaios in June expressing their support for his efforts to be fully recognised by Turkish authorities. The Greek government has recently tried to mediate in the crisis and Bartholomaios was due to visit Mount Athos, when the subject of Esphigmenou was set to dominate proceedings.
OCA DIOCESE CALL FOR WITHDRAWAL FROM THE WCC
THE DIOCESE OF THE MIDWEST of the Orthodox Church in America at its 45th Diocesan Assembly, held 10th -12th October called for withdrawal from the National Council of Churches (NCC) & WCC. Their resolution began: “WHEREAS, the World Council of Churches affirms a heretical ecclesiology which states that, ‘Each church is the Church catholic and not simply a part of it. Each church is the Church catholic, but not the whole of it. Each church fulfils its catholicity when it is in communion with the other churches’ (source: Called to be the One - Church statement adopted at the Ninth WCC Assembly, February, 2006, Porto Alegre, Brazil); and WHEREAS, the NCC and the WCC have confused liberal political ideology and sexual immorality with the truth of the Gospel and freedom in Christ … … be it further RESOLVED, that the Diocese of the Midwest calls upon to the Orthodox Church in America to withdraw from formal membership, and active participation, in the NCC and the WCC forthwith.
CHRISTIAN PRIEST BEHEADED IN IRAQ
THE FUNERAL of a decapitated “Syrian Orthodox” priest, laid to rest in Mosul, was held on 12th October, the day after his body was found. The priest’s captors had demanded public apologies for Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address and payment of US$ 250-350,000 ransom. The decapitated body of Fr Paulos Eskandar was found in an eastern district of the Iraqi city with his arms and legs severed and arranged around his head, which rested on his chest. He had been abducted by an unknown Islamic group. His remains were brought to a local hospital which then contacted his church. The Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Mosul, Mor Greogorius Saliba Shamoun, returned immediately from Synod meetings in Syria to conduct the funeral service. The “Syrian Orthodox Church” is in fact not one of the family of Orthodox Churches, but one of the Non-Chalcedonian or Monophysite communions. Fr Iskander, highly respected in the community and recognised as being unprejudiced in his conduct, is survived by his wife, Azhar, sons Fadi and Yohanna, a married daughter, Fadiyeh, and a daughter, Miriam, 13. More than 500 people attended a memorial service on Thursday for Father Iskender, a priest at the St. Ephrem Church in Mosul. “He was a good man and we all shed tears for him ... He was a man of peace,” said Eman Saaur, a 45-year-old schoolteacher who said she attended Fr Iskender’s church regularly.
Mosul was a centre of Christianity in Iraq prior to the US invasion and Christians made up around 3% of Iraq's pre-war population 26 million people. “It was a tragedy,"”said Hazim Shaaiya, 60, who had come to the memorial service to pay respects. The news of the priest’s murder came as the leader of an Iraqi Christian group said that more than 35,000 Iraqi Christians have fled to Syria to escape the violence in their country. Islamic groups have carried out several car bomb attacks on churches and Christian areas. Christian women have also been kidnapped in large numbers, and on other occasions been killed for not following Islamic social and dress codes.
An Iraqi priest, who has fled to Sweden, has also published a letter describing what amounts to a full blown campaign of terror against Christians in Iraq, following the Bush-Blair attack upon that country which is perceived as being an attack by leaders of the “Christian West.” Based on accounts from Christians still living in the country, Fr Adris Hanna warns that “Christians are living a terrified life in Mosul and Baghdad. Several priests have been kidnapped, girls are being raped and murdered, and a couple of days ago a fourteen-year-old boy was crucified in the Christian neighbourhood of Albasra.” Fr Hanna also reported that he spoke “to a group of nuns who were robbed and treated brutally on their way between Baghdad to Amman in Jordan.” He ended his letter with a plea: “We must do what we can to stop [the massacre] . . . . We must do something.”
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