Word: patriarchalism
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...Ecumenical Patriarchate has been caught up in the latest phase of the long-standing feud between Turk and Greek. After the Byzantine capital fell to the Ottomans in 1453, Constantinople (now Istanbul) became the heart of a once vast community of Christian Greeks, or Rum* (rhymes with tomb), in Turkey. Terrible cruelty set in with the 1821-29 war, in which Greece won its independence from Turkey. During that period Patriarch Gregory V was hanged at the gate of his palace. Even so, the Rum still numbered 1.5 million by World War I. Today only 7,000 are left...
Physical attacks are now rare. Still, the Patriarch and his parishioners have suffered continual harassment. Last May, when 150 youths broke into the courtyard of the Patriarch's residence to shout Greeks-go-home slogans, it took local police half an hour to answer calls for help. Greeks tell of job discrimination, unjustified evictions, expropriation of property, telephone threats and demands for "protection" money. Few would remain if the law allowed them to leave with their wealth. Says one: "All we have is tied up in the business. We have sent our daughter to university in Athens...
Last year the Turkish government slapped new taxes on all 50 Greek churches and 28 parish schools, threatening them with financial collapse. Church carpets, linens and tableware were attached for tax default, even at the Patriarch's quarters. Buildings have deteriorated because the regime must approve all repairs costing more than...
When a new Patriarch had to be chosen in 1972, the government exercised its power and vetoed the strongest candidates. That is why the 58-year-old Demetrios, a man with the qualities of a simple parish priest, was selected, though he was the junior archbishop. He thereby assumed jurisdiction over millions of Greeks in the West and became "first among equals" of the Orthodox patriarchs...
...they have for decades, four generations of family gather for their annual holiday in the comfortable old summer house on an island in the Stockholm archipelago. The patriarch sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night convinced he's dying; the rest of the time he's a hearty reactionary. His daughter Katha (played with a kind of wary warmth by Birgitta Valberg) is a doctor resisting the steadily accumulating evidence that the safe, predictable middle-class world is dying. She hopes wanly that the reassertion of family traditions will combine with her own insistently retained routines...