JERUSALEM - Nearly 40 Church elders on Thursday declared the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Patriarch Irineos I, persona non grata following a damaging land-sale scandal involving Jewish investors.
In a statement, 13 Greek Orthodox bishops and 25 archimandrites said they had decided to "strip Irineos I of his duties as patriarch in the Holy Land, no longer work with him and considered him persona non grata in the Church".
The bishops who signed the document belong to the 17-member regional Greek Orthodox Holy Synod, said Dimitri Diliani, leader of a secular group of nationalist Palestinian Christians.
A formal decision to sack the patriarch can only be taken in a plenary session of the Holy Synod, which Irineos I, fearing the consequences, has refused to arrange, said Diliani.
Thirty-six of the signitories were Greeks and two Palestinians.
Irineos, who was elected patriarch in 2001, has suffered a series of scandals, the most explosive of which involved the secret sale of church land in Jerusalem to a group of Jewish investors.
The storm broke in mid-March when Israeli newspaper Maariv published details of the multi-million dollar transaction in which ideologically motivated Jewish businessmen acquired land in a predominantly Palestinian area of the Old City.
The transaction sparked fury among Palestinians as Greek Orthodox Arabs clamoured for his resignation and accused Irineos of being a traitor.
While the Palestinian Authority has demanded his resignation outright, the Greek government has also implicitly called for his departure.
05/05/2005 12:27 GMT