Archbishop Chrysostomos has vehemently denied allegations that he was asked to provide financial support to one of the monasteries at Mount Athos, Greece’s self-governing monastic community.
He was responding to an article that appeared in an ecclesiastical publication claiming that he had been approached by clerics of a certain monastery asking him for funds.
The publication hinted that Chrysostomos was mulling the proposal.
It was highly unusual for Mount Athos monks to seek support from a different Church, it noted.
Although the monastery in question was not named, in a statement responding to the allegations Chrysostomos made it clear that they were talking about Vatopedi monastery.
“It is an immoral lie,” the archbishop stated, apparently seeking to distance himself from the monastery, previously embroiled in a financial scandal in Greece.
“During my visit to the seven holy monasteries, no one asked me for financial assistance. We did observe, however, that certain monasteries there have a real need, but none of them asked me for help, although we might have been willing to assist them had they made such a request.”
The top cleric said that in fact during his recent visit to Mount Athos he deliberately avoided visiting the Vatopedi monastery “for the known reasons, and specifically because the elder there and the current abbot, was since 1978 in the Paphos district, at a time when I was Bishop of Paphos.”
“And when as bishop of Paphos I received complaints from the monastery of Agioi Anargiroi concerning the elder in question, in order not to publicly offend the elder, I kept it a secret for months and tried to get to the bottom of the affair, as a result of which my health suffered,” The sChrysostomos added.
He did not mention what the allegations against the elder were.
“Once I formed an opinion, I again summoned the elder so that he might confess the truth…but instead, his behaviour toward me was ‘diabolical’, he attacked me with all the force of his soul.
“I was forced to reprimand him and advised him to watch his tone, otherwise he’d exit my office via the balcony door.”
Despite repeated attempts to get the elder to come clean, the monk refused.
“I told him, ‘I want you to tell me the whole truth, and I will not expose you. But if you do not and keep me in the dark…I shall pray to God that you experience no joy, either in this life or the next’.
“He then left my office like a man possessed by the devil,” Chrysostomos concluded.
In 2013 it was reported that 14 people, including Abbot Ephraim of Vatopedi monastery, were indicted on several counts including money laundering related to a land deal with the Greek state in an affair that came to be known as the ‘holy exchange’.
The scandal dated to 2008. A preliminary probe showed the monastery got prime, state-owned real estate in exchange for cheap land.
Ephraim was fully acquitted in March 2017.
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