Metropolitan Clement of Larissa and Platamon | June 6/19, 2026
It is known that Ecumenism
constitutes a serious deviation not only from the Orthodox Faith, but also from
the Orthodox Ethos. It has always been observed and established that slipping
into heresy has a spiritual basis: the egotistic autonomy from the Catholic
Mind of the Church, which inevitably leads to a division in the Body of the
Church. This leads to the spiritual abandonment and desolation of the one who
becomes puffed up and, with demonic inspiration and persistence, struggles
uncompromisingly to convince others as well that his destructive choice is
necessary and constitutes a correct and obligatory teaching and course, both
theoretically and practically, for the supposed good of the Church and of men.
However, divine abandonment has
no good results at all for the one deviating and those with him. The most usual
thing is that there are either hidden or even manifest deviations from the
moral law of God, which normally is expected to govern every sensible and
God-fearing man. The public trumpeting of moral perversion, into which heretics
fall, and the public tolerance and covering of it by those who associate with
them, in the name of supposed rapprochement, love, and unity, ends up being
something completely repulsive and soul-harming.
If any perversion whatsoever is
tolerated, with the justification that we are facing new data in the world,
society, and mankind, and that in the name of supposed Orthodox witness and
condescension it is necessary for economies to be accepted which constitute
clear transgressions of the law, then the deviation becomes difficult to heal,
if not incurable.
There, unfortunately, are found
the fallen Ecumenists, who proceed openly and publicly to acts so glaringly
un-Orthodox that the conscience of everyone who has remained uncorrupted in
days of such great and obvious apostasy as our own is stirred up.
To be more clear, we mention the
case of the New Calendarist and Ecumenist Archbishop Elpidophoros of America,
who, as is known, performed in Glyfada of Attica in 2022 the baptism of the
children of a homosexual couple from the Greek diaspora of America, an event
which caused a certain uproar. Indeed, when in the year 2024 Elpidophoros of
America wished to visit the Holy Mountain with a group of pilgrims from the
diaspora, he was not received by the Holy Epistasia and the Holy Community of
the Holy Mountain, precisely because of his above-mentioned act. In Karyes
everything was closed to him and his entourage.
Nevertheless, certain
pro-patriarchal Monasteries then hastened to receive Mr. Elpidophoros, in order
to render good services. So also the Monasteries of Philotheou and Karakallou,
which are not reputed to be especially pro-patriarchal, but which nevertheless
show submission to the immoral ones of the Phanar, because for them patriarchal
favor takes precedence even over the Orthodox Faith and Tradition and even over
the Orthodox Ethos! Why? Because they maintain good relations between their
Monasteries in America and their ecclesiastical administration, and also
because the wretched ones await the canonization of their departed Elder
Ephraim of Arizona! It is enough for their Elder to be glorified, even if it be
by the transgressors of the Faith and Ethos of the Church! The honor of the
Elder takes precedence over and surpasses everything! May the Lord preserve us
from such a kind of deviation!…
However, to return to our
continuation, just a few weeks ago, at the end of May 2026, Elpidophoros of
America appeared again with an entourage, this time with graduates of the Holy
Cross School of Boston, and visited the Holy Mountain, where in Karyes he was
received by the Civil Governor. He again visited the pro-patriarchal
Monasteries in order to receive a coating of supposed traditionality, since by
his ecumenistic acts in America he shamelessly tramples upon every notion of
canonical and dogmatic order. He was also received at the new calendar Metropolis
of Thessaloniki, and on the Sunday of Pentecost he presided at the Liturgy in
the Church of Saint Nicholas of Aretsou of the Metropolis of Kalamaria. The
media, however, wrote of an indisposition which he felt, such that he reached
the point of collapse and fainting…
It is not clear whether the
Athonites, whether the Commemorators or the New Calendarists who associated
with him honorifically and liturgically, know of his new immoral acts, which,
however, were promoted with all boldness and officiality. In Greece and on the
Holy Mountain, many of the Innovators say that it is not their concern what the
various high-ranking Ecumenists do in their own sphere. Nevertheless, we live
in the age of the internet, and everything becomes known with astonishing
immediacy. It is not possible for us to know matters of various current events
and yet to be ignorant of, or not wish to be informed about, inconvenient
truths, which must not be covered up and thereby make accomplices of those who
pretend ignorance.
We therefore recall that as
recently as January 29, 2026, an ecumenistic Prayer Service was held within the
framework of the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,” which was established by
the “World Council of Churches,” in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity in
New York of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America under Mr. Elpidophoros.
The full ceremony is on video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGjN7nQNT4I&t=210s.
The general theme of this year’s week was the verse from the Epistle of the
Apostle Paul to the Ephesians: “one body and one spirit, even as ye are called
in one hope of your calling” (4:4), an astonishing passage of particular
ecclesiological significance and weight, which of course is brutally abused by
the Ecumenists, who use it with the greatest ease for the promotion of their
unacceptable ideas.
In the semicircle of the official
participants in the said joint prayer before the Holy Bema of the Church
of the Holy Trinity, the center was occupied by the official host, Mr.
Elpidophoros, and to his right and left were spread out his “Ecumenical
Partners,” Papists, Anti-Chalcedonians, Lutherans, Anglicans, and other
Protestants, who are characterized, according to the established ecumenistic
terminology, as “Ecumenical leaders and faithful of various Christian
traditions” (Orthodox Observer, 30-01-2026). The congregation was
interconfessional. Prayers and speeches of an ecumenistic nature were addressed
by the whole group of participants, and at the end the “kiss of peace” was
exchanged. The prayers were chiefly from the “Armenian Apostolic Tradition,”
rendered by the Choir of the Church and also by the Choir of the Armenian
Cathedral Church. Mr. Elpidophoros characterized the speech of the Papist
Cardinal of New York, T. Dolan, as “enriching,” and offered him a silver
pectoral cross.
Mr. Elpidophoros, in his ecumenistic
address, urged us “to move beyond our ecclesiastical isolation [in the sense of
conservatism]” and “to intentionally embrace the diversity that already exists
in the Body of Christ” (https://orthodoxobserver.org/diversity-exists-in-the-body-of-christ-archbishop-elpidophoros-says-at-ecumenical-prayer-service/).
This is a “with uncovered head” proclamation of the essence of the Ecumenist
heresy against the dogma of the Church. Her one and unique Body, which is
animated by the one Holy Spirit, supposedly includes, in an expanded sense, all
the severed-off heterodox. Although the holy Chrysostom emphasizes precisely
the opposite: namely, that friendship with heretics precisely disrupts the
unity of the one Body and makes those who deviate to be of an alien spirit
(Homily XI, 1, On the Epistle to the Ephesians).
What followed was even more
bitter and sorrowful: two “women clergy” also took part in the ecumenistic
prayer group. Katrina Foster, presiding “bishopess” of the “Metropolitan Synod
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,” a publicly declared homosexual,
that is, a lesbian, and the “pastoress” Kirsten Guidero of the “Episcopalians”!
We recall in this connection also
a recent text of ours concerning the presence of Ecumenists from among the
Orthodox at the “enthronement” of the first “woman archbishop” of the
Anglicans, Sarah Mullally, an event which, however, they carefully passed over
in silence, obviously because of its provocative nature.
If the distorters of divine
things, the Ecumenists, insist that ecumenistic ceremonies of this sort
constitute “Orthodox Witness,” as they proclaim in season and out of season in
order to deceive themselves and those who pay attention to them, then we think
that words have truly lost their real meaning. Acts of this sort, which of
course are customary within ecumenistic tactics and practice, constitute a
manifest Betrayal of Orthodoxy! They are a most obvious indication of the
delusion of Ecumenism and of its slipping into distortions which not only
provoke disgust because of their deviation from the Orthodox Faith and
Tradition, but at the same time constitute the establishment of a manifest
perversion of the Orthodox Ethos! The ugliness of Ecumenism in all its
grandeur!
And the maestro of this
completely tasteless and monstrous performance in New York, Elpidophoros of
America, then arrived once again in the “ancestral lands,” on the Holy
Mountain, in Thessaloniki, and in Kalamaria—after, of course, first paying
homage in Constantinople to the “great lord and master” of the pan-heresy, Mr.
Bartholomew, not in order to receive purification and forgiveness, but in order
to transmit pollution and stench.
And while the high-ranking
Ecumenists do indeed proceed with their incredibly distortive actions, how can
the Ecumenist sympathizers, who remain silent in the face of all this and
swallow it whole, reassure their usually uncatechized and disoriented flock
that everything is proceeding well and in an Orthodox manner?! Most likely by
means of their diligent devotion to musical activities, which they have now
established, even inside or outside churches, as a “new pastoral” practice:
musical-dance ensembles, songs and violins, stringed instruments and
percussion, art music, classical, folk, traditional, and light popular music,
known and unknown performers and composers, happenings, etc. All these have
been enlisted in our days in the anxious effort of the “modern pastors” to draw
people, offering bread and spectacle. Since we are in a tragic era of spiritual
intolerance and spiritual indigestion, it is necessary to cover the void with
things that are more humanizing, acceptable, pleasant, and… entertaining!…
The Church, of course, must draw
near to contemporary man in order to impart to him Christ unadulterated, whole,
and complete, especially indeed to the young, yet without concessions and
secularizations. And all this must in no way be opposed to the “right and
saving confession of the faith,” because otherwise we toil in vain, outside and
far from Christ.
The obvious secularization, which
likewise has now been established in the affairs of the Church, constitutes yet
another form of falling away from the Orthodox Ethos. Not, of course, to the
degree and extent of what occurs in Ecumenism, but nevertheless as a
degenerative phenomenon as well, which can serve the process of apostasy from
the faith: both by providing a “good outlet” for avoiding the true Orthodox
purifying and illuminating teaching and practice, and by constituting a “good
substitute” for covering over and obscuring ecumenistic deviations.
The truth is clear: Ecumenists
and Ecumenist sympathizers of every shade and kind do not walk according to
God; they serve the falling away from the Orthodox Faith and the Orthodox
Ethos, and they constitute examples to be avoided.
May all of us who are informed of
this remain faithful to Orthodox Witness and Life, with awareness, discernment,
divine wisdom, and blessing!
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