Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece
Source: Greek Reporter – USA
The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos described the Diaspora as a “great chapter of our history” and as “Greece outside the borders of Greece” in an interview with the New York newspaper The National Herald.
He is the first Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church to officially visit the Greek-American community in the last 50 years.
Ieronymos was the guest of Archbishop Demetrios of America and his visit will start on May 15 in Brookline, Mass., adjacent to Boston, where he will receive an Honorary Doctorate of Theology at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. The next day he will go to New York.
When asked how the Greek Church manages to financially support socially vulnerable groups of Greek people, he said that, “all Greeks help, even the poor, or less wealthy.” He stressed the assistance provided by the Diaspora, saying that, “We should refer to the assistance of many expatriates, of America and other countries, that contribute through the Orthodox and other churches”.
He said he believes that “Greece will come out of the impasse,” but he stressed that the country “will suffer and one or two generations of people will be wasted”.
The problem here is his mindset. There is NO DIASPORA of Greeks, Russians or others here in the United States. A “diaspora” indicates that a peoples belong elsewhere. The Greeks in the U.S. don’t “BELONG” to Greece and aren’t going back. Same with the Russians, Romanians, etc. This mindset indicates that the ethnic Orthodox in the U.S. or around the world are going home at some time. This is just wrong. These bishops want to procure this idea so that Greece can claim Greek-Americans as their own and continue to extract their money. The truth is, the Orthodox in America, of all ethnic backgrounds aren’t “going back” anywhere. The Orthodox Church in America is a church unto itself and foreign bishops are just visitors without any claim to any authority.