Pray and put up no more

Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation of St. Andrew the First-Called, head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin considers the actions of the Greek judicial authorities against the abbot of the Vatopedi Monastery on Athos, Archimandrite Ephraim, who is being charged with fraud, unfair, Interfax reports. "We turned to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, we turned to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, to the primates of all local churches, to all Orthodox people. We believe that a flagrant injustice is happening, and we must not only pray, but also show that we are with this injustice we are not going to put up," Yakunin said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also expressed concern over the situation around Archimandrite Ephraim, Ekho Moskvy reports. The Foreign Ministry notes that Efrem expressed his readiness to cooperate with the investigation. Attention is also drawn to the monk's state of health.

On December 24, the police arrived at the Vatopedi Monastery to arrest him, but after examining the abbot of the monastery by doctors, it was decided to leave the archimandrite in the monastery for health reasons. A spokesman for the monastery said at the time that the arrest was "of a purely political nature." According to him, less than a month ago, the belt of the Virgin Mary was brought to Russia from the monastery, and he did not rule out that the arrest could be connected precisely with this. Last week, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church also suggested that the rector's case was politically motivated, connected with his "triumphant return from Russia" with the belt of the Virgin.

The Vatopedi monastery case has become one of the biggest scandals in Greece in recent years. In 2008, the media reported on a barter deal, as a result of which the state exchanged elite real estate for abandoned lands that belonged to the monastery according to ancient documents. The deal, according to investigators, could cause damage to the budget up to 100 million euros. Leading local politicians, with whom the leadership of the monastery maintained relations, participated in its design, RIA Novosti reports.

The scandal surrounding the deal was one of the main factors in the change of power in Greece in the elections in 2009, when the socialists came to replace the center-right in the government. The new government also accused the previous cabinet of large-scale falsification of economic statistics, as a result of which Greece became the "weak link" of the eurozone, and it required multibillion-dollar stabilization loans from the EU and the IMF.

In the case of the Vatopedi Monastery, five former government ministers were involved, whose signatures are on the documents on the barter deal. All of them have been exempted from liability under Greek law, which places local politicians on short statutes of limitations for crimes. The investigation has not yet established a corruption component in this case. A total of 32 suspects are involved in the case, but none have yet been arrested. At the end of last week, the court ruled on the arrest of Father Ephraim.