Saturday, November 16, 2013

A war story from Greece

Thus when Greek Orthodox Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens ordered his people to hide persecuted Jews, SS commander Jürgen Stroop threatened to shoot the archbishop. Rutler finishes the tale by recounting a striking example of episcopal sangfroid: “The archbishop replied by recalling the lynching of Patriarch Gregory of Constantinople by the Turks in 1821: ‘According to the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church, our prelates are hanged, not shot. Please respect our tradition.’” The archbishop, happily, lived until 1949; Stroop was hanged after the war for his role in liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto.
From an article by George Weigel
HT: A blog reader

I had not heard this story before and found it uplifting.

2 comments:

lannes said...

"uplifting"? as in suspended on a
scaffold? a tasteless pun.

John (Ad Orientem) said...

I was actually thinking more along the lines of inspiring.