The following is in response to the June 1 news report, “Russian involvement on Mount Athos etc” (June 1). As a Greek American, I wish to dispute the anti Russian allegations in the News Report. First, Mount Athos is a holy mountain dedication of a life of prayer, fasting, and asceticism”. It is a holy place that should not be dragged into politics.
The Russians have had a presence on Mount Athos for one thousand years. It is racist and discriminatory to suggest that the Russians concern themselves withthe holy mountain for any reasons that are not religious. Mount Athos has a Serbian and a Bulgarian Monastery as well as a Russian Monastery. Furthermore, there are Sketes which include monks from Georgia and Rumania as well. There are also converts to Orthodoxy who are American, Australian, and European who live on the holy Mountain in pursuit of spiritual pursuits.
Perhaps National Public Radio can do reports on the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (distinct from the western established “Orthodox Church of Ukraine)”. Ukrainian Orthodox Christians under the canonical Church in Ukraine are being evicted from their Monasteries and Churches, and are being violently persecuted merely because they are under the spiritual (and NOT political) leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. The anti Russian clerics cited in this news report have conflicts of interest.
They are associated with Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople who started an inter Orthodox war by recognizing an illegitimate and pseudo Church in Ukraine for the purpose of overthrowing Orthodox canon law and expanding his own authority. Orthodox Christians do not appreciate the politicization of our holy Church which has been carried out by the Americans, and not the the Russians. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travelled to Greece in 2019 to ask the cowardly Archbishop of Athens to recognize the illegitimate “church” in Ukraine.
Pompeo had no business making that request and the bishops of the Church of Greece had no business recognizing a fake “church” which does not fulfill the criteria under Orthodox canon law to be considered a real Church. The real scandal in Eastern Orthodoxy has to do with the American government’s blatant interference in the spiritual life of Orthodoxy in pursuit of their geo strategic aims.
This news report about the Russians on Mount Athos is dishonest propaganda.
Theodore Karakostas
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