Greek politician warns of “major trap” for Mount Athos monks

Nikos Papadopoulos. Photo: Deputy's Facebook

Greek politician Nikos Papadopoulos, in an interview with the Greek branch of the Union of Orthodox Journalists, warned of a “major trap” that Greek state structures have set around the Holy Mountain. In his view, what appears on the surface to be a merely technical registration procedure in fact conceals a carefully calculated plan aimed at discrediting and spiritually subduing the monastic community.

According to the politician, Athonite monks are now being pressured to enter their monastic names into municipal registries. This initiative is directly tied to the introduction of new digital identity cards and the assignment of personal numbers to citizens. Papadopoulos is convinced that the authorities’ ultimate goal is to establish a legal “discrepancy” between a monk’s spiritual status and his secular data, so that it may later be used as a lever of pressure or as a pretext for interference in the internal life of the monasteries.

“They are doing this to humiliate them,” the leader of Greek Pulse said, urging the brotherhood of Mount Athos to exercise the utmost caution. He reminded them that the Holy Mountain is dealing with a government that has already openly set itself against the Gospel by passing what he called the “sodomite law.” In Papadopoulos’s view, those who are dismantling the traditional family in Greece will not stop short of undermining the last great spiritual stronghold – the monastic republic of Athos.

The politician spoke with particular bitterness about what he described as attempts by the authorities to “buy” the loyalty of certain monasteries. He referred to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s visit to Mount Athos, during which, in his words, the premier “rattled his coins,” prompting some monastery representatives to make symbolic concessions. Papadopoulos believes such gestures by politicians are aimed solely at diminishing the authority of the Holy Mountain in the eyes of the faithful.

Earlier, the UOJ reported on another statement by the Greek MP: “Those who beat priests in Ukraine are serving the devil.”

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