Globe and Mail, Canada
May 25 2005

Leaders vote to depose Patriarch of Jerusalem

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

By MICHAEL VALPY

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.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress