Repose of His Beatitue Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and of All Hellas

Fr John Salter writes:

Archbishop Christodoulos died on 28th January 2008. He had been suffering ill health for some time and in 2007 he underwent a liver transplant which was not successful. Whilst in hospital in Athens he was visited by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I. The Primate of Greece was the only Head of an Orthodox Church who had the privilege of living under a benevolent Christian government, with the possible exception of the small Orthodox Church in Finland. But there were tensions with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, which had jurisdiction in Greece over Mount Athos and certain institutions in Northern Greece not properly resolved after World War I liberated that territory from the Turks. The Ionian Islands ceded by Great Britain to the new Kingdom of the Hellenes was not exactly approved of by the Phanar, because the Orthodox in those territories were placed under the Archbishop of Athens. Another problem was the existence of the quite numerous Palaiohimerologites or The Old Calendarist Church of Greece, which came into existence as a separate entity from the State Church after 1924 when the Greek government pressurized the Church of Greece to adopt the Gregorian Calendar and to abandon the Julian. The Old Calendarists have recently received into their protection or under their omophorion those members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia who could not accept the union with the Moscow Patriarchate. The Old Calendarists have never stood at the forefront of the ecumenical movement and in that they are at one with the monasteries of Mount Athos. Nevertheless Archbishop Christodoulos was the third Primate of an Orthodox Church to invite the Pope to visit his Church, despite disapproval by some of his own flock, not to mention the Old Calendarists.

Archbishop Christodoulos was born in Northern Greece in the town of Xanthi at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. His childhood was spent in his country torn by war and by the Civil War which followed the expulsion of the Germans. He served the Church as Bishop of Volos before succeeding Archbishop Seraphim of Athens in 1998.

His Beatitude died of cancer aged 69 years. May his memory be eternal!