THE WOES of the Church did not end with the completion of a nine-month investigation into mismanagement of its finances, but appear to have just begun as the Bishop of Kition Chrysostomos yesterday pledged to give up his seat if it could be proved that the minutes of the Holy Synod setting out the investigative committee’s mandate were not altered.
He said the committee’s mandate had been doctored to include wide-reaching investigative powers over employees of the Archbishopric.
“I don’t question that there should be an in-depth investigation and that responsibility be apportioned, I question the so called terms of investigation as written in the report. There is an altering of the mandate approved by the Holy Synod, they are completely different in the code… and there is the crime, not to use the word deceit,” said the Kition Bishop.
The claim and pledge to resign if it was proved otherwise incensed the Bishop of Paphos Chrysostomos who was already at loggerheads with the Kition clergyman.
The Bishop of Kition had stormed out of a Holy Synod meeting last Monday after differences arose over how to handle suspected mismanagement of Church property, as highlighted in the recent report.
The Bishop of Paphos yesterday rejected claims of altering the minutes and questioned how it was possible for eight bishops to be wrong and one to be right. He charged the Bishop of Kition of acting as a constant obstacle to the work of the Holy Synod in investigating the looting of church property. “He always created difficulties because he didn’t want this investigation,” said Paphos.
Asked if the Kition Bishop was possibly concerned with the legal accuracies of the procedure, the Paphos Bishop replied bluntly, “Elsewhere is his pain but I am not a doctor and cannot cure this pain”.
“He wants to ridicule this project and me, and is finding 1002 reasons to do it. We told him once, twice, three times, he doesn’t understand. He did well to leave the other day and let us get on with our work,” he added. “There are people who didn’t want this report, don’t you understand that,” he asked.
The Bishop of Kyrenia Pavlos said he was saddened by the claims made by the Kition Bishop and charged him with making accusations without basis. In his letter, he said a careful study of the issue would prove that there was no change in the mandate of the three-member committee.
Lawyer Leonidas Georgiou who was a member of that committee insisted the mandate was clear from the start, describing Kition’s claims of altering the minutes as ‘libellous’.
“Kition never doubted the terms of investigation before, although he is saying that he did in December, he never did,” said Georgiou.
