Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

In a bid to bury a hatchet of sorts, Greek Archbishop Ieronymos will welcome Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios in Greece on May 23.

It will be the first meeting between the two church leaders after a long period during which they were reportedly not on speaking terms.

By George Gilson

That an issue concerning a religious institution and religious freedom might preoccupy an international economic conference at Delphi might seem a bit unusual to most at first blush.

The civil governor of the semi-autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos in northern Greece, Kostantinos Dimtsas, paid an official visit to Russia on Wednesday, following an invitation by the governor of Saint Petersburg, Alexander Beglov.

Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos will make an official visit to the United States in July, after an invitation by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

During his visit, Varthomoleos will speak at a conference on the environment. His schedule and the agenda of his meetings will be announced in the coming months.

By George Gilson

The Ecumenical Patriarchate's decision to cede Autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, effectively granting it self-rule and independence from the Moscow Patriarchate, has rocked the entire Eastern Orthodox Church threatening it with schism. Moscow has already broken communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate (its bishops, priests, and finally lay people).

The outlook for a tentative agreement between Archbishop Ieronymos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to loosen close ties between the Greek Church and the state appeared unclear on Wednesday after a church committee decided to halt discussions.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested over the weekend that a mosque in Athens should open with minarets if Greece wants to reopen the Halki Orthodox seminary near Istanbul.

During a trip to Turkey earlier this month, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visited the shuttered seminary and called for a joint visit there with Erdogan next time to reopen it.

The rift between Greek clerics and the government over a tentative plan to loosen close ties between the church and state seemed no closer to being resolved on Thursday as Education and Religious Affairs Minister Costas Gavroglou hit out at the Ecumenical Patriarchate for refusing to temper its stance on proposed changes to priests' pay status. 

Conservative opposition leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated his support for the views of the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the impending changes to church-state relations in Greece's Constitution, saying he is against them.

Talks between Education and Religious Affairs Minister Costas Gavroglou and members of a delegation from the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate on Wednesday served to highlight the different stances of each side vis-a-vis a tentative plan to loosen close ties between the Greek state and the Orthodox Church.