The Metropolitan of Zakynthos Dionysios removed from office 14 priests who refused to be vaccinated on Saturday. The metropolitan issued a clear warning and asked everyone in the Zante diocese to be vaccinated. He has permanently removed one of the 14 priests and given the others until the end of the week to be vaccinated, the Greek City Times reported.
However, not everyone liked the metropolitan’s move, and a small part of the island’s population shared leaflets accusing the metropolitan of “illegal and inhumane” decisions.
Τhe church leadership officially supports vaccination. The head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, spent several days in intensive care with coronavirus last November. A month later, he said: “I would be the first to go and get vaccinated if I had not been sick.” The archbishop announced he had received the vaccine on May 12.
However, several influential archbishops and clerics repeatedly tell the flock not to get vaccinated, while some refuse to let people into church if they are wearing a mask or have had the jab.
Seraphim of Kythira, one of the country’s most powerful clerics, is even spreading the conspiracy theory that “vaccines are a product of abortions.”
“This product that comes from killed embryos will be injected into our bodies. … They want to create a metahuman, a mutated man, a man who will be like a robot,” he said.
