Monks With Crowbars

By COSTAS KANTOURIS
Associated Press
THESSALONIKI, GREECE ?- Rival groups of monks wielding crowbars and sledgehammers clashed Wednesday over control of a 1,000-year-old monastery in a community regarded as the cradle of Orthodox Christianity, police said.

Seven monks were injured and taken by boat to receive medical treatment. They were released after several hours. No one was arrested, but three monks were banned from re-entering the Orthodox sanctuary of Mount Athos, on a self-governing peninsula in northern Greece.

Esphigmenou monastery is the scene of a long-running dispute between Orthodox Church authorities and rebel monks who occupy the site. Both Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the Orthodox Christian church, and Greece's highest administrative court have ordered their eviction, but the monks refuse to budge.

The rebel monks vehemently oppose efforts to improve relations between the Orthodox Church and the Vatican.

The fighting broke out between the rebel monks and a group of legally recognized monks.

The outsiders attempted to force their way into the monastery's offices in Karyes, the administrative center, to begin construction of a new building. The occupying monks attacked them with crowbars and fire extinguishers.

Esphigmenou's rebel abbot, Methodius, said his monks were provoked.

"We were attacked and had to respond," he said. "They should be ashamed to call themselves men of the cloth."

In October, a court in the nearby city of Thessaloniki handed down two-year suspended sentences against nine monks and former monastery members for illegally occupying Esphigmenou's offices.