HOLY METROPOLIS
OF NAFPAKTOS AND SAINT VLASIOS
ANNOUNCEMENT
Issuance of the Presidential Decree
for the dissolution of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery
and its merging with the monastery of Ampelakiotissa
It is announced to the people of our Local Church that the Presidential Decree No. 5/2013 on the dissolution of the legal person of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Scala of Nafpaktos and its merger with the Monastery of the Holy Metropolis Ampelakiotissa was published in the Government Gazette (F.E.K 14/17-1-2013)
Alongside the Holy Metropolis wants to make known the following:
1. The procedure for the issuance of this Presidential Decree according to the law was the following: Assent of the local Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios, approval of the Holy Synod, proposal by the Minister of Education, Religions, Culture and Sports, Opinion of the Council of the State, signed by the Minister of Education, signed by the President of the Republic, publication in the Government Gazette.
2. The whole process was lawful and transparent. In the file of the case to the Ministry of Education were included the views of the Monastery with opinions of two university professors and lawyers, and there was also a question in the Greek Parliament on the matter addressed to the Minister of Education, with data taken from the Monastery. Because we live in a law-abiding country we have to accept its decisions. Anarchical and autonomous actions cannot be justified in any modern state.
3. The issuance of the Presidential Decree was the result of the extreme attitudes held by the officers of the Monastery, who, despite many efforts made by the Metropolitan, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the Synodical Committees and other church persons, refused to discuss ecclesiastical, canonical, legal and managerial issues, which emerged in the Monastery and the Monastery remained essentially without legal representation since 2006. Thus, the people of the monastery who handled these issues are solely responsible for this development.
4. From the text of the Presidential Decree it is clear that from now on the monks of the former Monastery of Transfiguration will be monks of the Monastery of Ampelakiotissa and all assets that belonged up to now to the Holy Transfiguration Monastery will belong to the Monastery of Ampelakiotissa whose Metochion the former Monastery becomes after the merging. The Metropolis, being a separate legal entity from the legal entity of the Monastery, is not entitled (nor indeed intends) to claim any property belonging to the former Holy Transfiguration Monastery and its monks.
5. After the delivery and acceptance of the books, of the cash, etc, of the management of the Monastery there will finally be inspections on the management of the Monastery and their findings will be published so that people can know the truth. The monks should cooperate in absolutely transparent procedures with recognized high-standing and, above all, impartial auditors that will be appointed competently, in order to conduct a full audit.
Therefore, the audit which has not materialised since1997, mainly the audit of public management Inspectors on 2005 which failed to produce a result due to non-cooperation of the leaders of the Monastery with the inspectors, non-cooperation for which they were convicted and punished with imprisonment sentences, finally will be completed.
6. This is also an opportunity to apply the decisions of the Holy Synod, which were articulated in an article that should be inserted in the Internal Ruling regulation of the Monastery, which was signed by the monks themselves and has been sent to the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. Therefore, the Internal Ruling Regulation of the Monastery of Ampelakiotissa which is to be set will resolve all outstanding issues, canonical, legal and ecclesiastical so that, finally, the Monks rejoin the sacred institution of the Church and monasticism.
7. The ecclesiastical and monastic ethos is an ethos of repentance. All of us must recognize our own mistakes, especially when pointed out by the official bodies of the Church, and to restore our relationship with the Church. One can not live autonomously within the church. Therefore, if the Monks of the former Transfiguration Monastery in a spirit of obedience and repentance decide to implement the decisions of the Holy Synod and of their Metropolitan, it is possible to rectify all errors and their consequences. There is always time for resuscitation.
8. The Holy Metropolis is not happy about this conclusion of the whole matter, after a long and insistent demonstration of a spirit of refusal and litigation on behalf of the officers of the Monastery, nor is it possible to interpret it as an attempt to impose, but as an act of correction of the wrong-doings and restoration of the monastic life in its traditional form. The Monasteries of the Church of Greece are governed as the sacred canons and ecclesiastical laws dictate. Nobody can act arbitrarily in the Church and in the State. Also, the Holy Metropolis believes that this development will have no effect on other monasteries, because all of the Orthodox monasteries of Greece function within the framework of the church and of tradition and can not be compared with the mentality that prevailed in the former Monastery of the Transfiguration.
9. The Apostle Paul teaches his disciple Timothy " that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." (I Tim. C 15), because the Church is the Body of Christ, is a sensitive divine-human organism which does not justify preeminence-seeking, rivalries, fanaticism, social racisms and many actions which are expressions of the old man. The greatest asset of a cleric, of any grade, of monks and laymen is to have ecclesiastical mind, and this is obtained by vigorous ascesis, repentance and long apprenticeship in studying the ecclesiastical texts and the Tradition of the Church.
10. Responsible for this development, apart from the monks themselves, are those lay people who wanted to become fans of the monastery and cover the anti-monastic and anti-ecclesiastical actions of the officers of the Monastery, acting sometimes in ways unprecedentedly uncanonical against all the Metropolitans of Nafpaktos.
We believe that the people of the Local Church, who have suffered for over thirty years with the continuous disobediences and antagonisms to the Metropolitans of Nafpaktos, hope and pray to God for wisdom, discernment, repentance to prevail at last, because then everything will be resolved in the best way for the glory of God and the praise of the Church.
From the Holy Metropolis
