On St. Justin of Ćelije's quiet support of the G.O.C. and Non-Commemoration

 

Here we will present evidence regarding Saint Justin Popović, who is our guide in this study. Whenever he referred, in his official writings published in Greek, to the key issues of Orthodoxy in the modern era, he also mentioned the "Old Calendar" issue, but certainly not as a schism. It is noteworthy that after the publication of the well-known Second Sorrowful Epistle by Saint Metropolitan Philaret of the Russian Diaspora (see it in our work, Saint Philaret of the Russian Church Abroad – A Modern Ascetic and Confessing Hierarch [1903–1985], Phyle, Attica, 2015, pp. 163–197), Saint Justin sent a monk, a student of his, to New York in 1972 to personally convey his enthusiasm and congratulations for that monumental text of Orthodox Confession against Ecumenism. Furthermore, he maintained excellent fraternal relations with members of the Patristic Calendar, such as the late Monk Victor Matthaios (†1973), publisher of the Great Synaxarion (see The Great Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church, vol. XIV, Pentecostarion, 5th ed., by Bishop Matthew Langis of Oinoi, Athens 1999, pp. 451–452, note). He also gave a written blessing to a monk, his student, during the latter’s further studies in Greece in the mid-1970s, to serve liturgically at a women's monastic hermitage in Attica, where the then Archbishop of our Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece was commemorated. Can one imagine that a Patristic figure of the stature of Justin Popović, with the most intact and pure Orthodox dogmatic sensitivity and conscience, would have guided his student into entering a schism and an extra-ecclesiastical state? Such a notion is a glaring absurdity, as well as an impermissible blasphemy!…

 

- Metropolitan Klemes of Larissa and Platamon, 100 χρόνια Ἡμερολογιακῆς Μεταρρύθμισης (1924–2024) Ἡμερολογιακὸ – Οἰκουμενισμὸς Κοινὸ Πασχάλιο – «Πρωτεῖο» Κωνσταντινούπολης [100 Years of the Calendar Reform (1924 – 2024): Calendar – Ecumenism – Common Paschalion – "Primacy" of Constantinople], Larissa, 2024, Chapter 10, p. 115.