Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos on Tuesday received the newly elected Archbishop of Sinai, Symeon, whose ecclesiastical title means he is now the abbot of the historic St. Catherine’s Monastery, a closely watched meeting that comes in the wake previous and unprecedented dissension amongst the monastery’s brotherhood of monks.
Symeon succeeded Damianos this month after the latter stepped down as abbot, or hegumen as the title is known in the Orthodox Christian tradition, after serving as Archbishop of Sinai since 1974.
On his part, Symeon thanked Archbishop Ieronymos and the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece for their standing support of the Sinai monastery’s brotherhood and the venerable Greek Orthodox institution, considered the oldest continuously inhabited monastery of Christendom.
The succession of hegumens at St. Catherine’s came after a shocking Egyptian appeals court decision in May that threatens the very existence of the monastery in the Sinai wilderness.
