A priest in Athens has been suspended after including two girls as altar servers in a church service, angering hardliners in the country’s all-male Orthodox church, his parish and media reports said Thursday.
The parish of Saint Nicholas Ragavas in the the capital said Father Alexandros Kariotoglou who used to preach in Sydney (Theological School of St Andrews) had been “verbally” suspended by the head of the church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos.
The Church of Greece, which safeguards the country’s dominant Orthodox faith according to the Greek constitution, is all-male and staunchly conservative.
It opposes same-sex relations, premarital sex and abortion, and also resisted efforts to limit liturgies and Holy Communion during the coronavirus pandemic.
No official reason was given for the suspension, but the row began after a picture of the two girls, dressed as altar servers and clutching candle holders, was posted on Twitter after Sunday’s service.
“Since when is it allowed to dress girls as little priests? This is a distortion of church tradition,” said an irate user.
The move immediately sparked a row on social media, with critics accusing the Orthodox Church of Greece of bowing to “fundamentalist” hardliners.
Ta Nea daily reported that the Holy Synod, governing body of the Church of Greece, would meet next week to discuss the issue.
The Holy Synod and the archbishop’s office could not be reached for comment.
A theologian, author and teacher for nearly four decades, Kariotoglou was a faculty member at St Andrew’s theological college in Sydney, and later taught migrant children in an underprivileged Athens neighbourhood.
Dimitrios Moschos, a professor of church history at the University of Athens, told state TV ERT there are “no specific rules” excluding female altar servers in Orthodox liturgy, but that it was more a “tradition” in Greece.
Last year, a senior Greek cleric sparked uproar after declaring on national TV that rape entails a woman’s consent and does not lead to pregnancy.
Source: AFP
