According to the abbot of Esphigmenou monastery located in Mount Athos, more than 120 Greek monks are suffering food and medicine shortages due to the stance of the Orthodox Church, which considers them apostates and wants to force them out of their 1,000-year-old abode.
Abbot Methodios in a press conference in the city of Thessaloniki, northern Greece, revealed that monks are getting sick and dying and that there is no doctor to help them. Methodios and the monks of his monastery have barricaded themselves inside the building of Esphigmenou monastery from which authorities want to evict them.
Esphigmenou along with other Mount Athos monasteries, sketes and monks, have been involved in a long dispute with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The monastic community of Mount Athos is under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch and all monks are required to commemorate him. However, since the 1970s, Esphigmenou monastery had refused to commemorate him.
In 2002, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate declared the schismatic monks of Esphigmenou monastery, illegal, announcing the formation of a new Esphigmenou brotherhood. However, the monks refused leaving their monastery. In December 2006, members of the new brotherhood tried to force their way into the monastery’s offices. During the clashes seven monks were severely injured.
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