ATHENS – On the sacred soil of Mount Athos, a rogue sect of monks who have unlawfully occupied a monastery since 2002 and resisted all attempts to remove them, said they’re readying for a battle to the death if police again try to remove them.

“We’re ready to defend the monastery to the death; this is our spiritual homeland. Here we were born spiritually, and here we will die,” said Archimandrite Methodios, from the Esphigmenou Monastery, that has 118 monks, said the Greek City Times, referring to a request by the police to Mount Athos officials to let them move in.

“If the fathers of the monasteries and the police come here to make Greeks fight against Greek monks, they should reconsider. Regardless of the outcome, let them come. Will the monks simply stand by if an officer assaults one of us?” Methodios asked.

His group said it’s standing fast and expecting a clash with police whose letter asked for increased resources to evict them, although the last attempt in 2006 brought photos of bloodied monks that gained them sympathy, authorities backing off.

Police tried again in 2013 but were met by Molotov Cocktails and other weapons being used by the monks whose calling makes them men of God and saw Methodios sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison for throwing a firebomb.

That was later reduced to less than six years and several other monks were convicted and received prison sentences but none has served any time in jail because they remain ensconced on the mountain, and untouchable for now.

In a review of the standoff, Religion News said it has pitted the official church against the rebels in the 130-square mile peninsula that houses 20 monasteries and about 2,000 monks from across the Orthodox world.

https://religionnews.com/2024/07/31/police-monks-gear-up-for-another-battle-on-mount-athos/

Mount Athos is a special jurisdiction under Greek law and the European Union, placing it directly under the purview of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which is based in Constantinople, and it remains traditional, barring women and female animals.

In their letter to the Mount Athos ruling authority, police said they wanted support to go in again with ranks of more officers and heavy vehicles, anticipating a firefight with the monks said to be armed to the teeth.

YOU’LL HAVE TO KILL US

“Greek police should have acted long ago. It’s their constitutional duty to protect Mount Athos, which is part of Greece,” said Father Bartolomeos, the abbot of the New Esphigmenou Brotherhood, which the Ecumenical Patriarch set up in 2005. Bartolomeos and his brotherhood plan to move into the space occupied by the dissident monks.

He said that police “have the means to conduct a smooth evacuation, but the real threat comes from the occupiers, who possess explosives and guns inside the monastery,” indicating the potential for a battle.

The Esphigmenou monks residing on Mount Athos have rebranded as Genuine Orthodox Christians, to distinguish themselves from mainstream churches and are fierce fundamentalists who don’t recognize some saints.

Atop the gate to Esphigmenou hangs a banner that reads “Orthodoxy or death.” The monastery coined the phrase in 1972 as it cut ties with the Ecumenical Patriarch. Since then, it grew in popularity in the Russian Orthodox Church and has been associated with fundamentalist and Russian nationalist organizations, including monarchists opposed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.

The phrase has been banned as extremist material in Russia since 2010. It’s a motto the Esphigmenou monks seem to have lived up to in their decades-long struggle, the religious news site said of what could be a coming showdown.

Methodios has said he favors Russian ultranationalism and praised the idea of a Greek Hitler. The Genuine Orthodox Christians have also not accepted the Greek Orthodox Church’s 1924 adoption of the Revised Julian liturgical calendar.

That is used by the  majority of Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions but not the Russian, Serbian, Jerusalem and other patriarchates do not who say that not using the Old Calendar is unacceptable ecumenism with Catholics and the Western world.

The break between the monastery and the Greek Orthodox mainstream stretches back over half a century to 1972, when Athenagoras I, a predecessor of the current Ecumenical Patriarch, began the slow process of repairing relations with the Vatican, the religious news site said.

Refusing to commemorate the Patriarchs and joining the Old Calendarists took the monks out of communion with the wider Greek church and caused the Ecumenical Patriarchate to deem them “schismatics” in 2002.

According to the Greek Constitution, heterodox or schismatic monasteries (as well as Roman Catholics) aren’t allowed on the mountain. In 2005, the Ecumenical Patriarch called for their removal and established a monastic order to replace them.

Archimandrite Methodios has asserted that any attempt to remove the brothers is religious persecution and his monastery has also claimed that police intervention would create new martyrs.

A DIFFERENT DOGMA

“Methodios has effectively introduced a new doctrine by claiming that he should practice his faith only in one particular place, the occupied monastery,” Bartolomeos said of the dilemma in getting them removed.

Police and the courts have repeatedly failed to get them off the mountain and each time it has created a kind of curious sideshow in the media and support from similar fundamentalists in a country where Orthodoxy is almost universal.

Ships that supply the other monasteries on the peninsula have ceased to supply Esphigmenou, and its monks have become an increasingly isolated enclave on the already remote mountain, refusing much communication with the other 19 monasteries, the report said.

“So there they see themselves as very much barricaded, because they have to do their own thing to be able to continue to get supplies in a way that the other monasteries aren’t,” said Samuel Noble, a scholar of Orthodox Christianity at Aga Khan University in London. “There’s an enormous siege mentality that has built up over the years.”

Indeed, the Genuine Orthodox Christians compared police action against the monks to the blockade of Gaza by Israel in its hunt for Hamas terrorists who killed more than 1200 Israelis in an October, 2023 raid.

“The reference to a sufficient number of policemen for a long period of time, foreshadows an attempt to block the Monastery for many years with the aim of handing over the Fathers from the threat of starvation,” the group said.

“This plan would constitute a grave violation of basic human rights. After the global outcry over the blockade of Gaza, to which international humanitarian aid is sent, the possible creation of a blockade center in Greece is going to discredit the country worldwide.”

“Athos is super autonomous in two ways. It’s autonomous relative to the Greek state in that the Greek state touches it very, very gently,” Noble said. “And then there’s a degree of autonomy relative to the rest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.”

Beyond Esphigmenou, the other monasteries of Mount Athos tend to practice far more conservative strains of Eastern Orthodoxy than other churches under the purview of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, he noted.

“So anything that touches on Athos touches on this sort of double autonomy that they have. And so trying to do something is really difficult, because you don’t want to upset either their special relationship with the Greek state, or their special relationship with Ecumenical Patriarchate,” Noble said.