UNITED STATES
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
For immediate release: Thursday, February 19, 2015
Statement by Melanie Jula Sakoda of Moraga, CA, East Bay Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (925-708-6175, melanie.sakoda@gmail.com)
A recent special assembly of the Long Island-based Orthodox Church in America (OCA) nominated an episcopal candidate for the long vacant see of the Diocese of the South.
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While the selection of Archimandrite Gerasim Eliel is subject to approval by the OCA’s synod of bishops, normally such nominations are routinely approved. However, in this case SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is urging the synod to carefully consider this nominee and hold out for another candidate.
Eliel’s glowing resume leaves out some pertinent facts about him, in particular his long and close connection to two notorious Orthodox predators, Herman Podmoshensky and Pangratios Vrionis.
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While the resume mentions that Eliel’s monastery, St. Herman of Alaska in Platina, California, went into schism from the Orthodox Church in the 1980s, it chooses to omit the fact that the abbot who led the monastery into schism, Podmoshensky, left the Church in the wake of allegations that he sexually abused young men and boys. The Church never made any findings on the abuse allegations, electing instead to defrock Podmoshensky on the easier to prove charge of disobedience. Eliel, unlike most of the Platina brotherhood, chose to follow this sexual predator into schism.
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The resume also neglects to mention that after leaving the Orthodox Church Podmoshensky and Eliel joined a group led by a convicted child molester, Metropolitan Pangratios Vrionis. The metropolitan has two convictions for abusing minor boys, one in 1970 and one in 2003. He was defrocked by the Orthodox Church following his first conviction, but started his own church and made himself a bishop.
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