Using the Declaration of Saints to Strengthen their Heretical Plans

As we now all know, immediately following the official welcome of “Patriarch” Bartholomew, on October 20, 2019, at Karyes the governing seat of Mount Athos, Bartholomew announced plans to add to the list of saints 4 Athonites. These four are Daniel of Katounakia, Joseph the Hesychast, Ephraim of Katounakia, and Jerome of Simonopetra.

News in Greece reported that the Athonites “were brought to tears at the announcement” of the “great blessing” of “Patriarch” Bartholomew.

Bartholomew will, of course, use the fact that both Joseph the Hesychast and Ephraim of Katounakia were former zealots of Mount Athos. (The Elder Daniel of Katounakia has a bit of a different story….) The zealots of Mount Athos are those that have no spiritual communion with those who commemorate the ecumenist World Orthodox patriarchs.

The Elder Joseph switched between the two main groups of True Orthodox of Greece who were separated from each other in 1937. Elder Joseph made his switch speaking about what he thought was a revelation of the Mother of God (or at least that was what he used as an excuse) to switch. Some of his biographers write that the Elder Joseph was sad that there existed zealots cut off from the rest of the Athonites. The biographers though, fail to mention that the Elder Joseph was, at the very time he supposedly said that, also cut off from the Athonites who commemorated the patriarch and he also was one of the zealot Fathers. Later, when his synodia wanted to be with the big monasteries, etc., another “dream-revelation” told him that “the Church is with the Patriarchate of Constantinople”.

His dream went like this: “I was suddenly alone on a small piece of rock of the Holy Mountain in the sea and the rock was being thrown by the sea and  was in danger of sinking and drowning me.  I was frightened and thought if this rock was cut off from the whole and is being oscillated, soon it will sink and I will be lost.
Then with a big jump I landed on the steady part of the mountain.  Truly, the small part of the rock which I was formerly on was swallowed up by the sea and I gave glory to the Holy God that he saved me from perdition!”
Then I heard a voice that said, “The Church is to be found with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.”

The Elder Joseph, who previously had confessed that the Patriarchate of Constantinople had fallen into heresy (true enough!), now was convinced that the Patriarchate of Constantinople was “THE Church”, not because it repented of its heresies, not through searching the teachings of the Holy Fathers, but because he had seen a rock in a dream!

And so, “Patriarch” Bartholomew praised the Elder Joseph saying at Karyes at the announcement of Joseph’s future listing among “the Saints” that

….this blessed man was a deacon of reconciliation during a period of divisions and movements of separation amongst the monks of the Holy Mountain due to the calendar question, he bravely defended the unity of the Orthodox Church, having been informed (divinely) that the “Church is to be found in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople” and he thus cut off all communion with the zealots, teaching obedience at every time to the First of the Orthodox Church which is the Ecumenical Patriarch and Bishop of the Holy-named (Holy Mountain) Nation.

In this way, “Patriarch” Bartholomew puts men in the list of saints and tries to show their support for him. Would the Elder Joseph support the actions of Bartholomew? How can we know? Someone else will have to see another dream to answer that question!