Metropolitan Barnabas of Neapoli and Stavropoli said that the joint statement of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Archbishop Ieronymos last October, regarding the Church-State relations and the payment regime of the clerics, came like a bolt from the blue.
As Metropolitan Barnabas pointed out in an interview with “National Herald”, “When the Church sat, it appointed a committee, chaired by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, theologians and university professors, representatives of the Holy Clergy, to discuss those issues. The Church conducts dialogues with history and the people, and now the next meeting of the Hierarchy, on March 19, 20 and 21, will discuss this issue to assess the results of this dialogue with the State.”
Regarding the Autocephaly issue of the Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Barnabas as the hierarch of the Ecumenical Throne belonging to the dioceses of the New Countries stated: “We recognize the right of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the framework of his pastoral co-ordination responsibility to declare the autocephaly of the Churches, as all the Churches took from the hand of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Throne, the Tomos of Autocephaly. Our Ecumenical Patriarch can exercise this right under the canon law. This issue will also be discussed in the Hierarchy meeting on 19, 20 and 21 March. We have not yet got the agenda, but I think there will be no problem at all.”