The website Orthodoxtimes published another column about conflicts at the Phanar which started after metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis) had arrived.  The author informs the orthodox community “about a situation that unfolds there, between groups and sub-groups… everyone with aspirations for the future, with moods for the present, and with a competition for who will have the primacy in the patriarchal court”.

 “Things are not like what you write. It’s much worse,” Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon wants to become Patriarch, they tell. And because the other Hierarchs had realized something from the beginning, they showed their discomfort at his arrival.

The Metropolitans Demetrios of Princes Islands, Meliton of Philadelphia, and Bartholomew of Smyrna did not even attend his enthronement ceremony. In this way, they wanted to show their discomfort for him coming to Constantinople. And those who went to the ceremony, protested in an imaginative way. They sat in the back seats so that the camera lens would not record them!

“When they themselves have spent their youth in Constantinople. When they themselves lived with the few that the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsidizes and the Turkish yoke oppresses them, Emmanuel comes, with his French air being baptized number two. The one who does not allow the Ecumenical Patriarch to do His meetings in the presence of another Metropolitan except him”, the column informs.

The Metropolitan of Chalcedon continues his policy and does not seem to be intimidated by the discomfort of his brothers. He even managed to resent his former “alter ego” Metropolitan Amphilochios of Adrianople. Even he complains about the way he governs. As for what the Ecumenical Patriarch has been saying so far about what is happening in Constantinople? The well-known saying “divide and conquer” comes to His mind and laughs…