8/10/16
Petraki
Monastery in Athens was pelted with Molotov cocktails and the Greek
government has already condemned the act of vandalism, reports
RIA-Novosti.
Four
Molotov cocktails were hurled into the monastery at about 3:00 AM. The
fire damaged four automobiles in the monastery courtyard where offices
of the Synod of the Church of Greece and the archbishopric are located.
Petraki
Monastery in the Kolonaki (literally: “little column”) district of
Athens was founded in the seventeenth century, but a church on its
territory had been built as early as the thirteenth-fourteenth
centuries. The monastery frescoes were painted in the eighteenth
century.
“The competent authorities have already taken necessary
measures for finding the culprits and bringing them to justice,” an
official statement of the Greek government spokesperson Olga Gerovasili
reads.
“Freedom of religion and free performance of religious
rites are guaranteed by the Constitution and firmly safeguarded by the
state,” O. Gerovasili said, stressing that any forms of violence would
not be tolerated, reports RIA-Novosti.
“Our wish is that the Lord forgives these criminals,” a statement of the Synod of the Church of Greece reads.
A
number of Orthodox churches and monasteries in Greece were attacked
over the past few days. Last week twenty-six anarchists burst into a
church of the Thessaloniki Metropolis during a service and started
destroying what they could. Later they were acquitted by the court.
There was also an incendiary attack against one church in the city of
Heraklion in Crete along with attacks on two churches in Exarcheia, a
neighborhood of Athens. The Black Flame anarchist group is claiming
responsibility for the two latter attacks.
Translated by Dmitry Lapa
Source pravoslavie.ru
Picture ethnos.gr
