Leaders vote to depose Patriarch of Jerusalem

Published by the GlobeAndMail.com, May 25, 2005

Jerusalem cleric under suspicion for land deals says he won't quit

World leaders of the Orthodox Christian Church voted yesterday to no longer recognize the Patriarch of Jerusalem, one of the faith's most exalted clerics, because of alleged million-dollar land deals that risk igniting new Jewish-Arab violence.

However, the vote taken in Istanbul carries no weight. The titular head of the 300 million-member church, the Patriarch of Constantinople, is prohibited by the Turkish government from engaging in church affairs outside the country. Two Turkish non-governmental organizations have asked that he be prosecuted for convening a religious court.

Jerusalem Patriarch Eirinaios I, who attended the Istanbul meeting, has indicated he has no intention of quitting his job despite having been fired by the governing body of his autonomous church, regarded by Orthodox Christians as the mother church of all Christendom.

In addition, the Jordanian and Palestinian governments want him ousted and an Israeli court has blocked the Israeli government's recognition of him.

The Greek government (which immediately announced that the Istanbul vote "under the wise presidency" of the Patriarch of Constantinople should be respected) is investigating his possible links to Greek organized crime.

The hottest water that Eirinaios is in involves 198-year leases worth $130-million (U.S.) on two venerable hotels and some adjacent shops that the Jerusalem patriarchate reportedly granted to anonymous Jewish investors just inside the Old City's Jaffa Gate at the junction of the Christian, Armenian and Muslim quarters.

The Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, as the patriarchate is officially known, is the largest landowner in Jerusalem after the Israeli government, having freehold title to about 20 per cent of the Old City.

If the reports are true -- Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv published portions of the leases this year -- a Jewish foothold in a part of the Old City that is distinctly Arab could dramatically, and perhaps explosively, undermine its fragile ethnic balance.

Two weeks ago, the British newspaper The Independent reported the existence of a widespread presumption that Jewish settler organizations, passionately devoted to an "undivided and eternal" Jerusalem as Israel's capital, are behind the deal.

The main buildings involved are the early 19th-century Petra Hotel and Hostel, built for Russian pilgrims, and the nearby Imperial Hotel, built in the early 20th century.

Eirinaios has declared he knew nothing about the leases. He has blamed the patriarchate's former financial manager, Nicholas Papadimas, who has vanished amid allegations that $700,000 is missing from church accounts.

Israeli authorities are searching for his wife on a separate charge of money laundering. From hiding, Mr. Papadimas has told the Greek and Israeli press that Eirinaios, who wanted to ingratiate himself with Israeli authorities, authorized the deal.

The Istanbul vote to withdraw recognition of Eirinaios has no legal clout because the Orthodox Church, like the Anglican Communion, is an umbrella faith of 16 autonomous churches of which the Jerusalem patriarchate is one.

Bartholomew, the Patriarch of Constantinople, is spiritual leader, but is considered merely first among equals like the Anglicans' Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Jerusalem church has 200,000 members, almost all Arab, and rests on a fat cushion of wealth generated by rents for its properties. Arab lay members and priests have long wanted the church leadership to be held by an Arab.

Eirinaios, 66, born Emmanuel Skopeliti on the Greek island of Samos, went to Jerusalem in 1953 and served for many years as exarch, a kind of ecclesiastical viceroy, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, alleged to be the burial place of Jesus and Orthodoxy's holiest shrine. He was elected patriarch in 2001.



Volume 7 Number 22 - Tuesday, May 31st, 2005	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY