By Athena Karsera
MONKS at a remote monastery near Larnaca are divided over whether the undecayed remains of their long deceased abbot are enough to make him a saint.
When monks at the Panayia Galactotrofousa Monastery near Larnaca recently exhumed the corpse of Abbot Chrysostomos, who died in 1988, they found that his body had hardly decomposed and that his right hand, which was holding a Bible, was intact. The Bible itself was perfectly preserved.
In accordance with monastic tradition, the body was exhumed in 1991 for the bones to be washed and stored away, but the monks were shocked to find that the body had hardly decomposed and did not smell.
“We were very surprised to find that, besides his head, the body remained virtually intact,” current Abbot Agapios told Politis.
He said although the body did not have the distinctive sweet smell of sainthood, it did not smell bad: “This indicates sainthood.”
But Bishop Epiphanios, the leader in Cyprus of the old-calendar Julian tradition followed by the monastery, disagrees, believing the body was preserved by minerals in the soil. He ordered that the body be reburied.
The four monks remaining at the monastery refused to comply with his wishes and kept Chrysostomos’ body in a chamber next to the church.
Bishop Epiphanios yesterday confirmed the story to the Cyprus Mail, and said he believed the body’s preservation had more to do with the quality of the soil around the monastery.
“Abbot Chrysostomos was not a saint,” he added.
He said the leadership of the Julian Church in Greece had been informed of the incident, and agreed that Abbot Chrysostomos should be reburied.
Chrysostomos built the monastery, which lies approximately 10 kilometres from the village of Kornos, in 1948.
Three of the monastery’s 17 monks were murdered by the Turks when the original building was razed during intercommunal violence in 1964. Chrysostomos himself was left badly injured in the attack.
The monks were forced to move to the nearby Ayia Thekla nunnery, until Chrysostomos decided to begin rebuilding the Monastery in 1977.
The handful of Julian monasteries are not recognised by the Orthodox Church of Cyprus and do not receive any funds from the Archbishopric, although relations remain cordial.
They still follow a calendar introduced by Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 46 BC, refusing to adopt the current calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century.
The Greek and Cypriot orthodox churches have switched to the Gregorian calendar, even though their Russian and Serbian counterparts, as well as the Patriarchate of Constantinople, remain faithful to the old calendar, which runs 13 days late.
