What happened to Archimandrite Adrianos (+2004), Elder and Confessor of St. Catherine’s Monastery, when he departed Mount Sinai and walled-off from the Ecumenists in 1993?

 

In 1993, after thirty years in the desert of the God-trodden Mount Sinai, I left my spiritual cell following prayer and departed from Mount Sinai. For I could no longer endure witnessing the Luciferian stubbornness of the ecumenist and papophile Archbishop Damianos [of Mount Sinai and Raithu], who insisted that we commemorate the traitorous and unworthy patriarch Bartholomew [of Constantinople]. And so I went to Australia, accompanied by a nephew of mine who knew English, in order to see my brother according to the flesh and to preach the Word of God. After 24 hours in the air, we arrived in Sydney, where my brother according to the flesh awaited us, along with many people. There were also many envoys from Archbishop Stylianos of Australia—another ecumenist, papist, and betrayer of our Orthodoxy—who had divided the people there into two factions. Indeed, he had even brought the police to the airport. When we were about to leave the airport, a clergyman of Stylianos, without a cassock, came up, seized my hand and said: “Welcome, Archimandrite Adrianos, Archbishop Stylianos awaits you so that you may receive his blessing, and then you may serve and preach wherever you like.” But my brother and others, both known and unknown to me, were waiting for me, and after greeting them all first, I told Stylianos’s envoy that I would think about it the next day—whether I would go or not. Then confusion arose, a chaos between the two factions: some insisted I go, others that I should not, resulting in the intervention of the police, who said the priest may go wherever he wishes. So, amidst noise, I went to my brother’s house. The next day, many people from all parts of Australia came to the house to visit me. Among them were two clergymen of Stylianos who said to me: “Father Adrianos, as you told us, today you will have rested and thought it over whether to go to the Archbishop. We’ve come to take you to him so that you may receive his blessing to serve and preach.” (What blessing? More likely his curse.) Then, before God and men, seated, I answered—as was later written in the local newspapers: “Fathers, if I knew that the Archbishop were Orthodox, I wouldn’t wait for you to tell me to go receive his blessing, as the priestly order also requires; I would go first, kiss his hands and feet, and with my own hand grasp one of my shoes. But now I will not go because he is an ecumenist and papophile—not Orthodox—and instead of having the icon of Christ as High Priest above his desk, Mr. Stylianos has the image of that Antichrist, the heresiarch pope. And so, I will not go.” Then they said, “Oh no, he is expecting us,” and with a fuss, they left empty-handed. The next day, two others came, who also left empty-handed. The following day, another two arrived—furious, like the executioners of the pagan emperors Maximian and Diocletian, that pair of devils—and they too left empty-handed. Finally, the next day, only the one who had received me at the airport came, and with pleading words said to me: “Elder Adrianos, Archbishop Stylianos beseeches you—let us at least go secretly, just so he may meet you, and then we will leave immediately.” Then I understood his devious schemes. I answered his envoy with the same words I spoke on the first day of my arrival: that with a heretical man, I have no contact. And thus it ended. Later, he sent a messenger saying that, through the government, he threatened to have me expelled—but he did nothing to me. In Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne, I remained for a month, during which I preached the Word of God, and once I completed my paperwork, I left for Canada, to Montreal, where many people were awaiting me and my company.

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We left Australia where it was summer and hot, and we found Canada in winter, covered with a white veil of snow. In Montreal, I was hosted for 11–12 days by a family, and every day a crowd of people would come that the rooms of the house could not contain. There, I preached the Word of God and heard confessions. But when the Bishop of Toronto, a certain Mr. Sotirios, learned that I had come to Canada and had not gone to receive a blessing from him, he called me on the phone. Yet because I could not leave the confession at that time, he called a second time and said to me: “Father Adrianos, you should know that there are also canons, and you must come immediately here to my Archdiocese.” I immediately replied to him: “Despota, all the canons of the Holy Pedalion are directed at those who transgress and trample upon our Saints, and especially, they speak about those in cassocks, so-called Orthodox Christians, who hold common prayers with heretics (let them be deposed) and concelebrations (let them be anathematized). I am not coming to your archdiocese because I dread heretics.” These I said, and immediately with a loud bang he slammed the phone on me. How could I receive a blessing from this blasphemous and evil shepherd, the papophile Sotirios?

After Canada, I was to go to America, to New York, where many Christians were waiting to see me and hear me speak the Word of God. But upon hearing this, Iakovos, the then-Archbishop of America, informed all his priests and his flock not to accept us. So I, in order to avoid causing commotion and scandal, told my people not to go, and thus that trip was postponed. I continued my missionary work in Canada. I remember that people had come by bus from Mexico and Chicago to hear me. At that time, I heard about a monastery outside Athens in Chasia, at the foot of Mount Parnitha—the Holy Monastery of Saint Cyprian and Saint Justina [under Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili]. I wrote a spiritual letter to the Monastery, asking if I was welcome there to serve. Once I was accepted, I went in 1993, joyfully, as a parish priest, serving at the outer dependencies of the Monastery and hearing confessions, performing exorcisms with the prayers against witchcraft of Saint Cyprian, who was formerly a magician and, after believing, was catechized and baptized by Saint Justina, and became Bishop of Antioch. However, since temptations existed and will always exist, some scandals occurred (“Woe to the scandal”), and so I peacefully departed from the Monastery, going to Menidi, where I heard many confessions. [The “scandal” in question reportedly involved a disagreement over some of the Elder’s personal assets. - trans. note] But before I left the Monastery of Saint Cyprian and Justina, I told a good clergyman that after my departure, the hand of God would fall upon the Monastery. A few days later, a great earthquake struck Parnitha and demolished the Monastery from the sanctuary to the interior of the Monastery. A little further down from that Monastery is a small convent, with four nuns who know me—Panagia Kanala—where nothing was damaged. Whereas in Chasia, in Menidi, there was much destruction: a factory collapsed, many people were killed. In the house where I was staying in Menidi, many cracks appeared, and immediately the family that was hosting me, along with myself, left the house and went to another part of Parnitha, where we stayed for a few days. The earthquakes did not cease; they said that approximately 300 small and large ones occurred.

After the earthquakes passed, I departed and went to the Holy Mountain, to the Holy Monastery of Esphigmenou, in 1999. There, as I had heard, the abbot was someone very good—Euthymios, as I had heard from all the monks and laypeople—but I did not find him there. When I arrived, the abbot was Mr. Methodios from Patras, entirely opposed to the former holy abbot Mr. Euthymios. The new abbot had divided the monastery into two factions, and many hieromonks and monks left because of him and due to various scandals that occurred within the monastery. He also came into conflict with the Holy Epistasia of the Holy Mountain. In the end, I departed from him after the feast of the Holy Prophet Elias in 2002, giving place unto wrath. I went to my former obedience, the Holy Monastery of Vatopedi, with a brother, in order to request my apolytirion [canonical release letter]. I requested my apolytirion from the abbot of the monastery, Fr. Ephraim, with entreaty, and he asked me to remain there. But how could I stay there, where—along with the other monasteries, 19 in total—they commemorated Mr. Bartholomew? I asked again for my apolytirion in writing, and again they did not give it to me. I went down into the world and stayed at the Holy Monastery of the Protection of the Theotokos [Agia Skepi] for a few months. The monastery, at my request, sent a letter to the Monastery of Vatopedi regarding my apolytirion, but until today, I have not received a response.

I am now living and ministering at the Holy Monastery of Saint Athanasios of Meteora in Lamia, in a place called “the monk’s vineyard,” under the jurisdiction of the Venerable Elder, the Most Reverend Kallinikos [of Phthiotis and Thavmakos]. I will never be able to describe to you the solitary, beautiful landscape of the Monastery, which is surrounded by greenery, while opposite it the splendid blue color of the sea dominates the view. Before I went to the Monastery, I was hosted for 2–3 weeks by a spiritual child of mine in a village near Domokos. During Holy Week we went daily to a church of the Patristic Calendar, the Church of the Life-Giving Spring, where I served as priest, and my spiritual child, as a layman, ministered in the sanctuary with a blessing, also carrying the Cross during the procession of the Epitaphios. On Pascha itself, we went to Lamia for a feast. There, I met the Most Reverend Kallinikos at his monastery of Saint Athanasios of Meteora. His joy, mine, and that of the fathers of the monastery was so great that they would not let me leave, and thus I remained with the six Fathers of the Monastery, and we became seven (seven being a symbolic number). And thus, I continue my missionary work.

I want to tell you that at my family home in Zakynthos, I built a small church dedicated to Saints Adrian and Natalia, and I also renovated the old church of All Saints, which had been ruined by the earthquakes. There, I had brought many over from the cursed New Calendar to the Patristic one. At that time, however, I suffered many temptations from a New Calendarist, Archbishop [Metropolitan] Panteleimon of Zakynthos, who, moved by envy and thinking I might be making a lot of money, shut down my old church. Later, the people of Zakynthos expelled him, while I pray that God may forgive him.

 

Greek sources: https://apantaortodoxias.blogspot.com/2010/09/1993.html and

https://apantaortodoxias.blogspot.com/2010/09/blog-post_09.html

See also “Elder Adrianos of Sinai: Letter of Orthodox Confession and Walling Off (1994)”:

https://orthodoxmiscellany.blogspot.com/2025/01/elder-adrianos-letter-of-orthodox.html