Editorial Ta Nea: Cracking down on a priest’s quackery

Each person’s faith is certainly a private affair.

The same stands true for unscientific convictions, such as the contention that vaccines are ineffective, or that miracles happen.

The problem arises when such private convictions take on a public character, when they are expressed by people who are in a position to sway, defraud, exploit, or deceive others.

Father Demetrios Loupasakis, a priest who conducts services at the church of the Saints Isidore on Mount Lycabettus in Athens, maintains that he himself does not perform miracles, but that he is the conduit through which a crucifix that he possesses and that he claims is a segment of the True Cross (on which Christ was crucified) has performed all sorts of miracles.

He has drawn large crowds of Orthodox faithful to the church.

Years ago, he was charged [in the context of a 2014-2017 investigation that was conducted by the then secretary of the Bishops’ Court of the Archdiocese of Athens, the current Metropolitan bishop Ieronymos of Larisa] with defiance, disobedience, skewing the Orthodox and ecclesiastical ethos, conspiracy, and scandalising the consciences of the faithful.

However, the state judicial investigation, that was requested by the ecclesiastical investigating magistrate after his three-year probe, with dozens of depositions, was never launched.

The report of the current Metropolitan bishop of Larissa – dated 25 August, 2017 – was shelved, and the priest continues his activity unhindered.

These pilgrimages, in which politicians are reportedly among the participants, cannot continue.

The Permanent Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece must intervene immediately to put an end to this scandal.

If the Church does not do so, the state must.

In a contemporary European country, one cannot tolerate the “manufacturing of miracles” – including a putative resurrection – or the exploitation of desperate and unsuspecting people by modern “Messiahs”.