The Vatican Insider website reports today (October 19, 2011) that Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew -- the spiritual leader of more than 300 million Orthodox Christians throughout the world -- made an important speech yesterday on the occasion of his 20th anniversary of election and enthronement as Patriarch.
Patriarch Bartholomew declared that the Greek Church needs to work with the Athenian government to help Greece come out of its current economic crisis.
The Greek Orthodox Church -- which is not separated from the state and benefits from significant resources (especially real estate property) -- has often come under attack for not contributing enough to public revenue. The spotlight has now fallen on churches and monasteries that have been exempted from the recent property tax levied across Greece.
The Ecumenical Patriarch's appeal comes amidst an increasingly tense social climate in Greece -- and just one day before a general crippling strike is scheduled to begin throughout the nation to protest Greece's painful new austerity measures.
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There was a scathing article about this in Vanity Fair a few months ago. Go to their site and search for "Greek Orthodox". They issued a furious rebuttal.
ReplyDeleteThen I noticed this, from a site that translates a few top articles from various European newspapers into other languages, this from Le Monde.
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/993001-church-fortune-remain-sacrosanct
I am glad to see that the Patriarch has made this statement. The crisis in Greece is dreadful -- we must keep them in our prayers.