Financial

Published by The National Herald, February 11, 2005

Financial transparency

Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church is not alone in its share of scandals involving clerics.

The news from Greece gets uglier by the day: scandals involving high-ranking church officials, innuendo and sloppy journalistic work combine to create an unbearably tense atmosphere, which is extremely embarrassing and painful to millions of Greek Orthodox people throughout the world.

The "bright side" of this situation is that it creates an opportunity to clean up the mess and punish those responsible for corruption, so that the Church can resume its role of serving the spiritual needs of the people.

It is thus encouraging that, on the Archiepiscopal throne in Athens is a leader with Archbishop Christodoulos’ caliber, who has already initiated the process of taking austere measures against those responsible for bringing disgrace to the Church by their actions.

We believe that he will continue to do so, in cooperation with the Holy Synod, until all bad apples are removed.

During his years on the throne, Christodoulos has proven that he sets the interests of the Church and the Greek people above all. This why we think he can clean up the mess.
The charges are serious, however ? fixing court cases, peddling influence, possible drug trafficking ? and the wounds could take years to heal.

Taking matters on a larger scale into consideration, it is more than obvious that there is a serious problem of corruption and dishonesty introduced to Greek Society.

There are serious allegations and a Parliamentary investigation into charges of corruption at the Greek Pentagon. A number of judges are either being punished, or under investigation for bribery in order to fix cases involving merchants of death, narcotics and prostitution. Serious questions about ethics have been raised concerning a number of the people working in the Media.

Meanwhile there are reports that, for a number of years that the Council of Hellenes Abroad (SAE) books have never been audited. If the money used to finance SAE comes from the Greek treasury, however, it seems to us that an audit should be required.

We do not doubt the honesty of the Greek Americans involved. But as the late Ronald Reagan used to say, trust but verify.



Volume 7 Number 7 - Tuesday, February 15th, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY