CYPRUS
Cyprus Mail
APRIL 21ST, 2018
EVIE ANDREOU
The minutes of a 2015 meeting of the Holy Synod on whether a priest who had served a prison sentence for the sexual assault of a girl he had fostered should be defrocked were leaked because of power games within the church over who the next archbishop will be, said one of the bishops at the centre of the row.
Elena Frantzi, 34, was found dead in her home last month after her foster father – Father Stylianos, a priest in Ergates village in the Nicosia district – had been reinstated as a priest after serving 18 months for sexually harassing her.
Bishop Nikiforos of Kykkos and Tylliria, Nikiforos said that the way the leaked minutes had been reported by the media made him look like he was defending Sylianos when that was not the case.
At the meeting of the Holy Synod on Wednesday where the decision to defrock Stylianos was taken in the wake of the uproar surrounding Frantzi’s death, Nikiforos gave the rest of the bishops a letter complaining about the leakage and calling for a probe into who was behind it.
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