Mount Athos Monks Resist Paying Taxes

By on March 30, 2011 in News

Monks from the 1 000-year-old autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos on defied the cash-strapped Greek government by refusing to pay property taxes on Tuesday.
The Finance Ministry, which has been forced to accept an international bailout, recently announced plans to tax the monks on any real estate in their possession outside the boundaries of the autonomous state.
Mount Athos, or the Holy Mount, is divided into 20 self-governed territories on the Athos peninsula in north-eastern Greece.
It serves as the spiritual centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Despite protests by the European Parliament, women, including female journalists, are banned from the rugged 300km² peninsula, which has been dedicated to the Virgin Mary since 1060.
Under the constitution, Mount Athos is also exempt from paying taxes or tariffs to the Greek government.
The 2,600 monks who live on Mount Athos called an emergency session to complain that the Greek government was ignoring their rights as an autonomous state. They said they had written a protest letter to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.
The monks, who reportedly own millions of euros worth of real estate around Greece, have threatened to break off all contact with the government in Athens unless their demands are met.
(source: news24)



  • Logicalperson1

    If they own property in Greece, meaning outside Mt. Athos, they should pay.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Constantine-Ramirez/100001631240251 Constantine Ramirez

    It is what Christ said, “render to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God”. The issue is one of following Christ’s teachings or a political agenda.

  • Dorakatsimardos

    dont pay mt athos these outsiders are evil and just want money! o theos tha sas boithisi! kirie isou xriste eleson me.

  • vanhellslinger

    The monks are all homosexuals and false men of God. They live in Greece to honor their gay heros. Here is what I say to their heros;

    The Fraud of Gay Hero’s The gay’s have been selling us a bunch of horse manure. One of their favorite lies is the claim that ancient Greeks, Alexander the Great, Hercules, and the Sacred Band of Thebes were gay hero’s. In reality these men were probably victims of a system of education, culture and government that supported and encouraged teaching young boys to be gay. In other words the were gay by learned behavior. Young Greek boys were taught to wrestle in the nude, and to love one another, and coerced to accept gay love as a good thing. It is written in history, and generally uncontested that gay sex was part of the educational system in Greece. When you look at the statistics on homosexuality in all the countries past and present, you see that homosexuals were only a small minority of the population. So the probability supports seeing Alexander and the Sacred Band as not being natural gays. The historical facts show his childhood friend and lover to have disappeared or died, and Alexander then married a women. This fact increases the probability that he was straight, and not gay naturally. Alexander and the Sacred Band were, by modern standards, victims of homosexual exploitation. It is probable that the entire 300 men in the Sacred Band of Thebes were heterosexuals, that had learned to accept homosexuality, and never knew any other way of life, and if shown the other way, would refuse gay sex completely. The gays have been getting a big laugh at the straight community, every time the debate on whether Alexander was gay or not, because they knew the real debunker would expose gay history as a total fraud. Now don’t let them try that ever again!Vanhellslinger