May Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon forgive me for what I recently said about what is happening at the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
For what is happening from the moment he moved in the vicinity of the Bosphorus. I have nothing personal with him. I inform the orthodox community about a situation that unfolds there, between groups and sub-groups. Everyone with aspirations for the future, with moods for the present, and with a competition for who will have the primacy in the patriarchal court.
I just made a report and then the grumbling from the Phanar followed. “Things are not like what you write” they complained to me. I was surprised because my information is never refuted. “It’s much worse,” they rushed to correct me.
Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon wants to become Patriarch, they tell me. And because the other Hierarchs had realized something from the beginning, they showed their discomfort at his arrival.
They reminded me that the Metropolitans Demetrios of Princes Islands, Meliton of Philadelphia, and Bartholomew of Smyrna did not even attend his enthronement ceremony. In this way, they wanted to show their discomfort for him coming to Constantinople.
When they themselves have spent their youth in Constantinople. When they themselves lived with the few that the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsidizes and the Turkish yoke oppresses them, Emmanuel comes, with his French air being baptized number two. The one who does not allow the Ecumenical Patriarch to do His meetings in the presence of another Metropolitan except him.
And those who went to the ceremony, as they told me, found another way to protest against the Metropolitan of Chalcedon. That is why the younger Metropolitans Athenagoras of Kydonia, Stefanos of Kallioupolis, and Maximos of Selyvria attended the enthronement ceremony so as not to offend the Ecumenical Patriarch.
But they protested in an imaginative way. They sat in the back seats so that the camera lens would not record them! Leaving ostentatiously vacant the positions intended for them upfront. The Hierarchs of the Phanar with a view to the future have some nice ways to protest, completely imaginative!
The Metropolitan of Chalcedon continues his policy and does not seem to be intimidated by the discomfort of his brothers. He even managed to resent his former “alter ego” Metropolitan Amphilochios of Adrianople.
Even he complains about the way he governs. As for what the Ecumenical Patriarch has been saying so far about what is happening in Constantinople? The well-known saying “divide and conquer” comes to His mind and laughs…
From the column of Greek edition orthodoxtimes.gr, Melchizedek
