Author: Michael Howard in Athens
Publication: The Guardian
Date: April 27, 2001
Monks at the all-male community
of Mount Athos, one of the most revered places in Orthodoxy, will stage
an all-night vigil tonight to pray against the Pope's historic visit to
Greece next Friday.
Their protest comes amid mounting
anger by rank-and-file clergy at the church leadership's decision to lift
long-held objections to a papal visit.
Greece is currently engulfed in
a tide of strikes against the Socialist government's social security reforms.
Hundreds of thousands of workers
took to the streets across the country yesterday, shutting down schools
and offices, halting public transport and closing down the media. Even
priests heeded the strike call.
If the papal visit goes ahead, religious
conservatives have predicted widespread protests, and even violence.
The 80-year-old John Paul II will
pay a 24-hour visit to Greece next Friday to retrace the footsteps of St
Paul the Apostle, making him the first pope to visit the country since
the "great schism" of 1054 which split Christianity into eastern and western
branches.
The Pope will make a pilgrimage
to the Areopagus, the hill to the west of the Acropolis where St Paul preached
the Sermon of the Unknown God.
He will also celebrate mass at the
Olympic indoor sports stadium. The tour then takes him to Syria and Malta.
Moderates within the Greek Orthodox
church hope the trip will help heal nearly 1,000 years of deep distrust
between the churches. Many Orthodox faithful blame the Vatican for what
they perceive to be centuries of misdeeds against them - from the sacking
of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204 to the bombing of Orthodox Serbia
in 1999.
"We expect the Pope to make a humble
gesture of love and apology," said Haris Konidaris, the spokesman for Archbishop
Christodoulos, the head of the Greek church. "Then the fanatics here will
be silenced."
The archbishop has repeatedly called
for calm from Greece's ultra-Orthodox groups, including the influential
Old Calendarists, who boast some 800,000 followers.
"The faithful will take to the streets;
blood could be shed," warnedone black-robed monk.
"Out with the two-horned beast,
the Pope of Rome 666!" read a banner. "No to the leader of heresy," read
another.
Police have tightened security at
Catholic churches across Greece. But fears for the Pope's safety have been
raised since the weekend, too, when a home-made bomb exploded outside the
offices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Athens. No one was hurt in the
afternoon blast, which was claimed by anarchists.
Last week, Bartholomew I, head of
the Eastern Orthodox church whose seat is in Istanbul, had welcomed the
papal trip and he accused opponents of displaying "ecclesiastical provincialism".
