AsiaNews.it, Italy
April 25 2005
Greek Orthodox Patriarch labelled as `Judas’ for having sold Church
properties in Jerusalem
The Orthodox community is asking for his resignation and removal.
Jerusalem (AsiaNews) When Greek Orthodox Patriarch Ireneos was
leaving the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the end of his Church’s
Palm Sunday ceremonies, on Sunday, 24 April, he was met by lay
members of his own community, and others, demonstrating against him
and calling for his resignation or removal. Some of the demonstrators
called him “Judas Iscariot”, in reference to his selling out
important properties of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
This brought even greater intensity to the wave of demonstrations and
protests against Ireneos that has been going on for weeks, ever since
the press discovered – and published – that he had sold prominent
buildings owned by the Patriarchate just inside the “Jaffa Gate” of
the Old City of Jerusalem. Official investigations have also been
launched by three governments: The Republic of Greece, the
Palestinian Authority and the Kingdom of Jordan. This scandal has
been intensified that a key person in promoting Ireneos’s election,
and introduced by him several years ago as a most trusted friend, is
a notorious criminal, wanted by the police of several countries (he
was finally captured by Italian police, in Bologna, last weekend),
and that another key aide to Ireneos has also fled, under suspicion
of corruption and embezzlement.
For his part, Ireneos refused to answer questions from Greek
Government investigators, and has insisted publicly that he had never
“sold” the properties. This is only technically correct. Technically,
like all the many other land sales by a series of Greek Patriarchs of
Jerusalem over many decades, the transactions are officially leases,
but leases for decades and even centuries (in some cases, for 999
years, in others, for 99 years) so that, for all practical purposes,
they are indeed the same as sales. In all these cases, the properties
are effectively gone, while there is no public accounting of what is
done with the payments received from them. Attempts to challenge the
Patriarchate’s practices in the Israeli courts have always failed,
with the courts ruling that the Patriarch’s right to dispose of the
property and money of the Church is absolute, and not subject to
control.
Now pressure for Ireneos’s resignation and removal is growing even
among his Greek clergy, but it is probable that the Governments
concerned – and not only Israel – will not allow his removal. A
weak, divided, scandal-plagued church is, after all, much easier for
all governments to control than a strong, united church with moral
authority, says an expert observer in Jerusalem who wishes for
anonymity.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, as a concrete
historical organisation, dates back to the first half of the
sixteenth century. Then the Ottoman Empire, which had just occupied
the Holy Land (1516), extinguished, in effect, the indigenous
Eastern-rite Patriarchate, and imported Greek monks to take over its
structures and property. These monks are organised as a religious
brotherhood, the Hagiotaphitic Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the Holy
Sepulchre, which takes care to accept only ethnic Greeks, from
Greece, and to exclude the local Christians, all of them Arabs, from
any positions of power or influence. The same situation had existed
in Syira, in the Patriarchate of Antioch, until 1899, when the local
faithful and clergy rose up and drove the foreigners out. Since then
the Patriarchate of Antioch has had an indigenous leadership.
Recently this indigenous Patriarchate has tried to establish a branch
also deep inside the Jerusalem Patriarchate’s territory, in Jordan.
In addition to questionable personnel and business decisions, Ireneos
has also distinguished himself by hostility and aggression towards
other Christians, continually provoking disputes with the Armenian
Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and violating the rules governing
relations with the Catholic Church at the Holy Sepulchre. In the most
notorious incident, on 27 September last year, he ordered his monks
to launch a physical assault on the Jerusalem police who were
protecting a handful of Franciscans inside the Holy Sepulchre. The
violent frenzy lasted a full half hour before the police managed to
subdue the Greek monks. The whole event was captured on film by an
amateur videophotographer and this evidence has been widely viewed by
authorities and journalists.
This week Jerusalem police are nervously awaiting Orthodox Holy
Saturday when Greeks and Armenians may be in violent conflict at the
Holy Sepulchre. Ireneos has announced that he will not let the
Armenian Patriarch into the Edicule to light the “holy fire” together
with him, and all efforts by the Israeli government to convince him
otherwise have – until now – failed. The Armenians have asked the
Israeli Supreme Court to intervene, and to order that the Armenian
Patriarch be allowed into the Edicule, in accordance with the special
international legal régime at the Holy Sepulchre, but the Court has
refused to intervene. Israel has an international treaty with the
Holy See – the 1993 Fundamental Agreement – that obliges the State to
enforce the legal régime governing the Holy Sepulchre, but the
Armenian Patriarchate is obviously not a party to this treaty, and is
therefore powerless to invoke it directly (although the Armenians
benefit from it indirectly, whenever both they and the Catholics are
victims of Ireneos’s aggression). As regards the Catholic Church,
however, Catholic Church sources tell AsiaNews, Israel has recently
been showing a new willingness to control Ireneos, and to prevent him
from violating the rules or attacking the personnel of the Catholic
Church at the Holy Sepulchre – although the situation needs continued
careful monitoring, especially with a view to Orthodox Easter next
Sunday. Israel’s increased attention to protecting Catholic rights
and Catholic personnel, say the same sources, is attributable to the
Catholic Church’s ability to invoke Israel’s treaty obligations in
this regard.
Catholic leaders are deeply worried by the scandals surrounding
Ireneos, since the general public does not always distinguish among
the different organisations designated as “Christian” or as
“Churches”, with the result that the Christian religion itself risks
being brought into disrepute. (AC)
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