The lawyers of the two monks are requesting the cancellation of the proceedings regarding the scandals in the Monastery of Saint Avvakum from the investigation committee for the case.
Specifically, they state:
– by the Village High Priest for minor ecclesiastical offences
– by the Holy Synod only in the case of imposing the great excommunication.
– either by the Rural High Priest for minor ecclesiastical offenses (79 A)
– either by the Episcopal Court for ecclesiastical offenses of medium importance (798) or by the Five-member Synodal Court for ecclesiastical offenses of major importance (79 C).
– either for ecclesiastical offences
– either for the imposition of the penalty of great excommunication.
Therefore, based on the above, our clients, as monks, are subject to the judgment of His Eminence Metropolitan Mr. Isaias of Tamasos and Orinis, who, based on the Charter, had the authority to judge them and impose an ecclesiastical fine on them. In this case, however, the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Tamasos and Orini Mr. Isaias, instead of calling them to a hearing and imposing on them – in the event that he judged that they had committed a regular offense – some ecclesiastical penalty, referred their case to the Holy Synod, assuming implicitly – but wrongly – that they were previously clerics, although the canonical offenses that, according to the publications, are attributed to them, could only have been committed from the status of a monk.
[…]A) We demand that the proceedings up to this point be annulled, that is, the proceedings before His Eminence the Metropolitan of Tamasos and Orini Mr. Isaia, the Holy Synod of the Church of Cyprus, the Six-Member Synodal Court and the Commission of Inquiry and
B) also requests, exercising the normal right of our clients that derives from the 14th rule of the local synod of Sardinia, that His Beatitude the Archbishop of Cyprus, Mr. George, but now in accordance with the procedures provided for in the provisions of the Charter of the Church of Cyprus.
