Arab Clergy of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem Announce Seven Demands - News | Orthodoxy Cognate PAGE

June 2014

Your All-Holiness,
Your Beatitudes,
Reverend Fathers, Your Graces,
Fathers and Brothers,

The content of this letter was written with much concern and anxiety over the future of the Orthodox faithful of the Church of Jerusalem and of the Orthodox Church in general, which today is facing enormous problems and challenges. However, these problems are being covered over by the slogan that a group of fanatical Arab Orthodox wants to Arabize the Patriarchate of Jersualem.

Instead of being met with thanks, those who are taking the initiative to reveal and explain what is happening in the Church of Jerusalem are being bizarrely threatened by the leadership of the Patriarchate with deposition, expulsion and persecution.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to tell the truth no matter the consequences because our motive is the good of the Church and not personal ambitions, since in the latter case we would have behaved differently, with the hypocritical obedience that is well-known in religious circles.

We are putting our future in the Church in imminent danger for the sake of the truth, so that the world will learn the reality of the problems. Afterwards, we leave judgment to God because we believe that other interests are being served by the indifference of those responsible, which causes us to doubt whether they are genuine shepherds for us, because good shepherds lay down their own life to save the sheep from the wolves. Therefore, we put the entire responsibility on their shoulders about what’s happening and what will happen since they will answer God on the Day of the Last Judgment.

Because we are members of the Arab flock and because we live the problems of the faithful and the attacks that they suffer from the heterodox on account of the indifference of the ecclesiastical leadership, we have repeatedly reported to our Patriarch Theophilos the concerns and anxieties of the people in the presence of the Chief Secretary and the other hierarchs of the Patriarchate. We waited long enough for the response of the Patriarch and the Synod, but in vain.

We have returned with love and humility, repeating our Old New demands, but we have been met with deaf ears. They have even begun to accuse us of being anti-Greek and of wanting to replace this patriarch with an Arab. We denounce this as a big LIE because we have no nationalistic motivation. We love Greece and we respect the role it has played in protecting the Holy Sites and Orthodoxy in the Middle East.

Our demands are purely spiritual, pastoral and canonical.


To read the full list of demands set out, see here:

Arab Clergy of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem Announce Seven Demands - News | Orthodoxy Cognate PAGE