Status of the Holy Mount Athos and its way of life will stay unchanged
31.01.2003 · English
STATUS OF THE HOLY MOUNT ATHOS AND ITS WAY OF LIFE WILL STAY UNCHANGED
Speaking at a Europarliament session, the Greek Minister of Culture Evangelos Venizelos made a special statement on the future of monasteries on Mount Athos.
He commented on a recent Europarliament resolution lifting the traditional ban for women to visit Mount Athos. He stressed that the Statute of the old monastic republic was not to be changed, because it had been legally fixed in the acts of the European Union and the Constitution of the Republic of Greece.
Analyzing the arguable resolution, he emphasized that on Mount Athos there were no public places at all which could be off-limits to women, as twenty monasteries have the exclusive possession of this self-governing region of Greece. “There are neither state nor public lands on the Athos Peninsula,” he stressed.
Mr. Venizelos expressed his perplexity at the fact that it was the way of life of the Orthodox monastic communities on Athos that attracted attention of the European parliamentarians. Instead, they could have focused their attention, for instance, on the ban for women to participate in the forming of the cabinet and to exercise their suffrage in the Vatican, which is a member of the Council of Europe.
He reminded the deputies that the special status of Athos was not only officially recognized and fixed in Article 105 of the Greek Constitution, but also legally confirmed in the special Athens Treaty clause specifying conditions on which Greece has joined the European Union. The competence of the clause had been reconfirmed in a special statement attached to the Amsterdam Treaty.
However, the Europarliament Culture Committee regarded it for some reason as necessary to hark back to the settled issue closely linked with the religious and cultural tradition of Orthodoxy that is fully entitled to respect and worthy representation in the united Europe.
Spiridon Hatzaras
Press Councilor of the Greek Embassy in Moscow
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