Great nations have failed, and in every case it was the government's corruption and neglect of duty that caused the sufferings and failures, of which the political history is too abounding and too accessible to be quoted. We only mention the Greek nation, perhaps the greatest and most illustrious of all nations that ever failed in their political career, because we are well informed and personally acquainted with the details that brought this formerly world-wide respected and valued gem of civilization into insignificance in the eye of the scornful, and a plaything in the hands of the so-called great powers of Europe.
In the year of 1902, while I was a High Priest, Archimandrites, grand representative of the Saint Mary's Monastery, Salamis; Orator and Grand Chaplain of the Supreme Council of Greece; and confessor in the most exclusive societies of Athens, hearing confessions and granting absolutions; the following incident, which is published for the first time, and only in parts that are printable, brought me to a final decision, that I should leave my home, my loved ones, and all the flourishing prospects to be a Bishop, with all the comforts and luxuries attached to a Bishopric, just because I had witnessed a few scenes of the manifold political plots that caused the downfall of my own nation, and my own people scattered to the four corners of the world, wandering, struggling for their existence, while Greece, the land of the Gods, and the home of art and beauty, was left in the hands of a few parasites, strangers and unsympathetic feudals who have shown no mercy in straining every material and spiritual bit from the people that still honors them as their kings and sovereigns.
At the time spoken of, there was an open secret to every well informed Greek that the Queen of Greece, Olga, had been the tool of the Russian bureaucracy, trying by means of religious influences to keep the Greeks under the Russian political control; that the Queen Olga paid the expenses for the education of a monk, who, on his return from Russia, where he was graduated from the theological academies of Kiev and Moskow, became the Queen's personal confessor, and afterwards by the Queen's very earnest and almost scandalous activities that monk was raised to the Metropolitan Throne of Athens, which position placed him at the head of the Greek Church, and made him the President of the Holy Synod of Greece.
The Metropolitan Throne of Athens is the highest and most exalted position that a mortal Greek could approach, and it is, in fact, the next to the King's Throne, most influential occupation, and more powerful, even than the Royal Throne, because, the Metropolite of Athens is the spiritual leader of all Greeks.
There was plenty of rejoicing in the Queen's camarilla, at the installation of Procopios (that was the name of the monk) as the Metropolite of Athens, and every effort, Queen Olga leading the fight, had gone forth to assure a complete victory for the Russian bureaucracy, over the few remaining unspoiled patriotic Greeks.
All the characteristics of a civil war were enacted in the streets of Athens when Queen Olga attempted to enforce upon the Greek people a new inferior language in their Bibles, and in their holy mass—a language, which the Greek people considered as a means to confound their historical and religious customs and habits and subdue them into a Russian spiritual dependency. Against the attempt there was the very best element of the Greek scholars. Adamantios Korais fought the fight, 100 years before this attempt was made, and he distinctly and clearly made it understood that the Attic Greek language has been, it is and must be the safeguard of all that is beautiful in the Greek history.
Faithful to their traditions the Greeks of the present generation fought and won a triumphant victory. The innocent blood of the people that was slain on the streets of Athens by orders from the Royal Palace, have wrote with indelible letters, the anathema, which, frenzied mothers in the sight of their assassinated sons, and overwhelmed in grief, cried against Queen Olga, and her crown all but torn to pieces by the wronged multitudes.
Within 24 hours from that terrible bloody day, that will remain an indelible stigma in the history of Queen Olga's life, the most exalted Metropolite Procopios was a fallen ragmuffin and the most hated person in all Greece. And when every one of his colleagues deserted him and the King and Queen shut their door in his face, leaving him a pitiful victim of the political plots to save the royal skin, and while there was no visible friend to give him a helping hand when fallen from the Metropolitan Throne, and while this monk-metropolite Procopios, in all his glorious days had been a profound enemy against every honest effort, especially against young priests who refused to serve his unlawful appetites, and my own experience with this monk-metropolite Procopios is not of the kind to be printed, yet, it was I who put my own life in a probable danger to save him from the mob, that was ready to attack him, and probably kill him, the day after I made his escape possible into the Saint Mary's Monastery, Salamis, where at the time I was Archimandrites.
Procopios, in the opinion of his own friends, was the last man in the Greek priesthood, qualified to occupy the Metropolitan Throne of Athens, and totally lost his will power when he became Metropolite by Royal favor. There was an organized clique around the Metropolitan mansion, but the controlling power should be located within the walls of the Royal Palace. Procopios was only an instrument transmitting orders. And if I was allowed to publish all that Procopios himself told me, in Salamis, it would make the Greek people sit up and take notice, but in my vows as confessor I have to carry the confession of the fallen Metropolite Procopios with me to my grave, unless the need arises to serve the best interests of my beloved country. It was his last confession upon the earth. He died and went there, where, at the great Judgment Day, he, surely will give account for all his deeds done in the body.