Sentences Significantly Reduced for Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Athonite Monks

Pravoslavie ^ | 5/26/21

[marshmallow]

Greek authorities have significantly reduced the 2019 sentences handed down against monks of the Athonite Esphigmenou Monastery who were involved in a violent altercation while resisting eviction from the monastery’s representative office in Karyes, the capital of Mt. Athos, in 2013.

The monks, including Abbot Methodios, were found guilty of instigating violence and throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers in the incident. Fr. Methodios and another monk, Fr. Antipas, initially received 20-year sentences in 2017, with 6 others receiving sentences of 10 years and 4 months, though those sentences were reduced to 17 years and 9 years and 5 months respectively in 2019.

According to the latest court decision, the sentence for Fr. Methodios and Fr. Antipas has been further reduced to 5.5 years in prison, reports Vima Orthodoxias.

The sentence for the other 6 monks has also been reduced to 2 years and 9 months in prison.

Esphigmenou Monastery has been in schism from the rest of the Holy Mountain, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and the rest of the Orthodox World for many years, in protest against the ecumenistic activity of the Patriarch of Constantinople with the Catholic Church and others. While the Athonite monasteries have protested such activity by ceasing to commemorate the Patriarch in the Divine services several times in recent decades, the Esphigmenou brotherhood has gone further by joining a schismatic, Old Calendarist jurisdiction.

[Redcitizen]

These aren’t monks. They are Friers.

[Chainmail]

Nothing says “the love of Christ” like fire bombs, I guess.

[married21]

😆

[Scrambler Bob]

Are those bottles full of Ale, or something more volitle?

[Redcitizen]

Could be filled with fire water.