Monk hospitalized after alleged attack on Mount Athos

THESSALONIKI, Greece—The Associated Press reported on Friday that a violent confrontation at Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos led to the hospitalization of one of the Holy Mountain’s monks.

It was last reported that the monk is in Thessaloniki, where he is being treated for cuts and bruises to his face and upper body. Thessaloniki is roughly 110 miles from Mount Athos.

Since 2003, a population of Old Calendarists have been illegally occupying the monastery. At the behest of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, there have been several attempted evictions over the past two decades, with one infamously including the throwing of Molotov cocktails by monastics in 2013.

Late this past Thursday, a monk from the canonical brotherhood of Esphigmenou was “attacked by rivals wielding gardening tools during routine groundskeeping work at an administrative building,” the AP reported.

Archimandrite Bartholomew, abbot of the officially recognized brotherhood, shared with the media outlet that the monk sustained facial and rib injuries from punches and blows with a wooden object. 

“What is the point of having these decisions (to expel the monks) if they are not enforced? They must be implemented,” Fr. Bartholomew told the AP.

The Old Calendarist brotherhood denied the accusations in a statement, saying “it is a well-known tactic for these perpetrators to play the victim.”

“They feigned injury in a performance worthy of an acting class,” the statement read.

A description of the alleged attacker was provided to police, and a public prosecutor in Thessaloniki was also formally notified of the case.

The rift at Esphigmenou began when the adoption of the Revised Julian Calendar was approved in 1923. With the ecumenical activities of Patriarch Athenagoras in the 1970s, Esphigmenou, along with several other monastic communities on the Holy Mountain, stopped commemorating the Patriarch.

The situation came to a head in 2002 when Patriarch Bartholomew officially declared the Old Calendarist community at the monastery as schismatic, and the Holy Synod of the Ecumenial Patriarchate of Constantinople declared their occupation of Esphigmenou illegal. Soon after, the creation of a new brotherhood at the monastery was permitted.

UOJ previously reported on the ongoing conflict and its history amidst attempts at forced removal of the schismatic brotherhood.

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