Bishop of Corfu on OCU recognition: Primate must be pressured by Phanar
Metropolitan Nektarios (Dovas) of Kerkyra and Paxoi talking with a Greek journalist. Photo: enimerosi.com
The ruling bishop of one of the oldest dioceses of the Greek Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Nektarios (Dovas) of Kerkyra and Paxoi suggested that the Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople put serious pressure on the Greek Church in the issue of recognizing the OCU.
“I cannot know if Archbishop Ieronymos was pressured – and how he was pressured, however, I think there must have been some serious intervention by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,” said Metropolitan Nektarios in an interview with Antonis Agas, a journalist of the online edition “Enimerosi”.
According to the bishop of the Church of Greece, there is big politics behind the crisis in Orthodoxy, and church schisms and disagreements, along with geopolitical rearrangements, pose a great danger to Greece.
“Always in history, a church crisis was followed by a policy. Unfortunately, politicians are always pushing the Church forward to serve their interests and by creating crises in our midst, they have the opportunity to bring crises to other levels,” noted Bishop Nektarios.
He also drew attention to the fact that no other Orthodox Church recognized the schismatic OCU: neither did the Presbyterian Patriarchate (bishop of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, etc.), nor the other Autocephalous Churches (bishop of Tirana, Poland, etc.), except only the Church of Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
We recall that on October 12, 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew in a telephone talk thanked the Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and all Greece, for the decision on the recognition of the OCU.
On October 19, 2019, Patriarch Bartholomew again expressed gratitude to Archbishop Ieronymos, this time for supporting Constantinople.
On the same day in the USA, the head of the OCU Epiphany Dumenko was given the Athenagoras Human Rights Award for the protection of the Phanar’s privileges. “Metropolitan Epiphany was an active supporter of religious freedom and a key advocate of the church and canonical prerogatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” as explained on the website of the award founder.
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