The Times of London

January 28, 2003

ATHENS - Police were outside the walls of the 1,000-year-old Mount Athos monastery last night ready to enforce an eviction order today in a "spiritual war" against a group of Orthodox monks.

The Orthodox Church views the monks as dangerous schismatics because they refuse to recognise the authority of the Patriarch.

But Father Methodios, the abbott of Esphigmenou monastery, vowed to stay put with 116 rebel monks, and they have stocked up for a siege.

"We do not intend to leave Mount Athos ," Father Methodios said yesterday in Athens , where he denounced Patriarch Bartholomew, the head of the world's Orthodox believers, as a heretic.

For nearly 40 years the monks of Esphigmenou, who permit no women on to the site, have condemned the Patriarchs and other Greek clergy for doing business with "heretics" such as Roman Catholics and Protestants. The latest crisis began on December 14 when the Patriarch declared the conservative monks schismatic, and the Mount Athos government administrator ordered their eviction. The original division came in 1964 when the late Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI healed a 900-year-old ecclesiastical breach.

Since 1972, when the Greek military government of the time made an unsuccessful attempt to force the monks to recant, a banner reading "Orthodoxy or Death" has fluttered above Esphigmenou's walls overlooking the Aegean Sea .

In what could have been a scene from the Middle Ages, Father Methodios brandished what he said were photographs of Patriarch Bartholomew giving communion to Catholics and Protestants. "We cannot have this," he said, as bearded fellow monks nodded solemnly. "We don't mention the Patriarch in our prayers because he does not keep the faith of our fathers."

The Mount Athos governing body, known as the Holy Society, has determined to put a stop to what it fears could be the start of a fundamentalist contamination. Weeks ago, it cut off food, water, fuel and mail service to Esphigmenou.

"The order violates European Union rules allowing freedom of expression," Iphigeneia Kamtsidou, the lawyer representing the monks, said.