Priest expels PASOK MP from church over LGBT law vote

Archimandrite of the Church of Agia Marina in Ilioupoli Seraphim expelled PASOK KINAL MP Pavlos Christidis from the Arcadian Association cake cutting event because he voted for LGBTQ+ marriage.

At the same time, the archimandrite welcomed into the church and congratulated the MP from ND Anna Karamanlis, who voted against the bill of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which caused outrage and reaction. In his post on the social network, Archimandrite Seraphim Dimitriou wrote:

“This morning, a worthy member of the MANA council, a real Greek Anna Karamanli, arrived at the church of the parish of Agia Marina Ilioupolis with great honor. Parish priest Fr. John, noticing her presence among the people, greeted and thanked her for her heroic stand with a clear NO to inhumane legislation, too much pressure, intimidation and everything else that she suffered from the lawless rule of the most destructive government of modern times, which reduced the Greeks to life on coupons.

On the contrary, the blessing and cutting of the cake in the temple of the Arcadian Association of Irioupoli dragged on for an hour, until the inhuman deputy Pavlos Christidis, who, despite being a father by nature, left the meeting, with incredible frivolity agreed to the “murder” of the innocent souls of children who will become the property of family partnerships plus, every unnatural legal order, with all that we know that entails.”

Gov't spokesman condemns priest's verbal attack against PASOK deputy

The government condemned on Monday the "targeting of PASOK Deputy Pavlos Christidis" by a Greek Orthodox priest over the deputy's vote for the same-sex civil marriage law.

State Minister to the prime minister and Government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis said in a social media post that the singling out of Christidis and his family by Archimandrite Serafim of the Church of Aghia Maria in Ilioupoli "is absolutely condemnable". He added, "These isolated incidents do not reflect the key role that the Church of Greece has played through time in terms of supporting Greek society."

Earlier, Christidis had said that the church official had harshly criticized him during an event on Sunday night, to which he had gone and had to leave early for other obligations, and had "targeted my family, accompanied by a photograph from the maternity hospital." 

Christidis also thanked PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis for condemning the incident and added that "in my values system there are no exclusions, neither of those whose rights must be recognized by the state nor of those who want to participate in our Church, which in any case is a pillar of Greece's social history and cohesion."

AMNA