METROPOLIS v METROPOLITAN: THE TROUBLED TENURE OF THE FIRST ARCHBISHOP OF AUSTRALIA

 

When it was all over and he had returned to his home island of Samos, Metropolitan Christophoros spent his retirement writing and telling all who would listen, tales of his sojourn in a remarkable country beyond the seas. Elderly members of the Samian community in Melbourne remember their childhood including a charismatic and kindly old man who would regale them with stories of a topsy turvy land where the seasons were reversed and strange and wondrous animals reigned. His vivid descriptions of the exotic Australian outback informed my own grandfather’s decision to migrate Australia, just a few years before the Metropolitan’s death.

Exactly one hundred years ago, in 1924, Metropolitan Christophoros stepped on Australian shores, despatched by the Ecumenical Patriarch to lead the emerging antipodean Church. It is fair to say that he exercised an unprecedented fascination upon the Australian media of the time. His arrival in Fremantle on 9 July 1924 was reported on by various news outlets, including regional ones, with the Sun News-Pictorial of Melbourne describing him as: “a tall, commanding figure, liberally bearded, and benevolent of countenance.” The Tweed Daily of Murwillumbah, New South Wales, informed its readers on 11 July 1924 that: “he is first office-bearer of his status in his church, to take up residence in Australia, and comes commended by the Patriarch to the Governor-General.”

From the outset, he enjoyed almost celebrity status among the media. As various mainstream news publications reported on his progress through the country and his rapturous reception by various Greek communities at stops along the way, much was made of his education, his erudition and connections. The Brisbane Courier opined that: “The Archbishop, who has a charming personality, is, among other things, an Oxonian, and his conversation reflects the outlook of a mind broadened by culture in many countries.” The Herald, in Melbourne, on 9 September 1924, informed its readers that: “he was a student for four years at the University of St. Andrew's, Scotland, and passed to the University of Oxford, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Letters. His treatise entitled “Ordination and Matrimony in the Eastern Orthodox Church” earned him warm praise from the Oxford professors, particularly from the famous English critic, Professor Brightman, who published the entire treatise in the Oxford official theological organ.” Indeed, he was the first Greek theologian to graduate from Oxford University since Mitrofanis Kritopoulos in 1630 and upon his graduation, was closely involved in discussions between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the British and American embassies regarding the situation of the Greeks in Cappadocia. He also led missions to complain about Ottoman mistreatment of Orthodox Christians to Serbia and Romania, was appointed on a diplomatic mission to London in 1919 by Eleutherios Venizelos and successfully organised the relief and re-housing of refugees in war-ravaged Serres, where he was appointed bishop. All of these things were reported by the Australian press, with admiration.

Urbane and only slightly oriental, Metropolitan Christophoros was every bit the “venerable and cultured ecclesiastic,” as Perth’s Daily News gushed on the day of his arrival, displaying the first example of the Australian media’s captivation with Orthodox vestments that has continued until the present day: “the distinguished visitor went ashore looking a picturesque figure in the impressive headgear and robe of his high office.” The Herald, in Melbourne, in contrast, was fascinated by his engolpion, writing:  “He wore a large jewelled symbol of his ecclesiastical rank, about four inches long, which glittered with emeralds and rubies. This hung from his neck by a long chain reaching just below his breast. It is not unlike a Mayoral ornament.” On 23 September, the Herald would report that a thief had broken into Evangelismos Church, “apparently under the impression that the crown set with rubies and emeralds, which, is worn by Archbishop Knetes… was kept inside the church.”

As presentable as he was, he was still however, as exotic figure to the local press. On 4 September 1924, Melbourne’s Sun News-Pictorial, in an article entitled: “When Greek meets Greek, Even a Bishop Must Submit to be Kissed,” observed:
“When he stepped from the train countrymen implanted resounding kisses on his bearded features. A porter or two looked on astounded. It was just the Greek way of welcome. To the onlookers it was all Greek.”

From the outset, the Archbishop let it be known that he had grand plans for Australia, with the Herald reporting: “People have been so kind to me since I landed… I feel that I am a kind of ambassador. I shall travel throughout , Australia, establishing churches which shall have a threefold purpose, religious, educational and charitable. They shall make Australia known to my country.”

Despite his sympathetic reception, Archbishop Christophoros was sensitive to the prejudices held by the mainstream towards his people. He had a solution for that too, informing the Herald, in an article entitled “Farms for Greeks:” “I have heard it said that Greeks congregate in your cities, and do not go out on the land. That is true, but there is excuse. My countrymen, as a rule, does not speak English. He clings on arrival to those of his own kin. But already I see a way out, whereby the, Greek will become a producer in this fine land of yours… As soon as practicable, I hope to establish throughout Australasia training farms presided over by Greeks who speak English and are familiar with your ways. To these farms arriving Greeks may be sent, and will receive the necessary training whereby they may go on the land and add to the prosperity of the great country which has received them so kindly.” The farms never eventuated.

Although he was initially welcomed with great fervour by the Greeks of Melbourne, it did not take long for the relationship to sour. Historian Hugh Gilchrist points to a rivalry between the longer established Ithacans and the parvenu Samians as a factor. A further factor would be inability of the local Greek bourgeoisie who employed their fellow Greeks in conditions of wage-slavery, to accept the precedence of another of the running of their communal affairs. The catalyst appears to have been the Archbishop gently correcting the parish priest Eirinaios Kasimatis when he read the wrong gospel reading during the liturgy, causing the priest to seize the Bible from him shouting: “I am not from Ankara – I am from the Ionian Islands.” He would go on to acquire the Greek community newspaper Ethniki Salpinx, from where he would accuse the Archbishop of various misdemeanours.

It did not take long for the matter to end up in the Courts. Prominent Greek community members Panayiotis Lekatsas and Constantine Black issued proceedings against the Greek Community of Victoria in the Supreme Court, claiming that the Archbishop’s appointment was invalid as the Greeks of Melbourne acknowledged only the “free” Church of Greece as their spiritual leaders and not the Ecumencal Patriarchate. The case was widely and extensively reported in the mainstream media, betraying the public’s bemusement at the conflict by such titles as “Greeks At Law” (The Argus 31 March 1925) and it involved some of the greatest legal minds of Australian Jurisprudence, such as Sir Own Dixon, counsel for the Community and the Archbishop, who went on to become Chief Justice of Australia and Sir John Latham for the plaintiffs. Justice Leo Cussen, in adjudicating the dispute, urged the parties to settle their differences, noting: “all Orthodox Churches, including the Autocephalous Church of Greece, recognise the Ecumenical Patriarch as the undisputed head of the Eastern Orthodox Church.”

Perhaps the most lurid description of the case was that which appeared in Labor Call, on 9 April 1925, the official organ of the Political Labor Council of Victoria, which is noteworthy for its excoriation of the litigants, its overtly racist overtones and its lampooning of the Archbishop: “There is a row on in the Greek community in Melbourne, which threatens to become as interesting as a wrestling bout at the Stadium…The parties to the conflagration are Archbishop Knetes, a recent arrival, who was received in great state, paid an officialcall on the G.G., and partook of ice-cream and bananas all round, and the old-established Greek community in Melbourne. It seems that, prior to the arrival of the man with the kink in his name from Turkey (not a very healthy place for a Greek bishop), the religious welfare of the ice-cream and banana merchants was looked after by a gentleman with the simple, childlike name of Ireneos Cassimates, who had been appointed by the Holy Synod—(get off the grass!) One of the first acts of the new archbishop was to remove Mr. Ireneos Cassimates, on the ground that he could not spell his name, and replace him with another reverend with the devastating name of Christoforos Demopoulos. This person was not acceptable to the ancient Melbourne Greeks, so Messrs. Panayottu Lucas and Constanine Black raised the flag of revolution, and now it seems by no means certain that the gentleman who arrived with so much ceremony and ice-cream is an archbishop at all, and there are dark rumours that the two rebels with the above short names are going to prove that he is simply Mr. Knetes, or even Knetes, without the Mr. On the other hand, a number of recent arrivals, headed by Messrs. Pestiferos Stinkopolois and Athanasius Credoforos, are prepared to support the archbishop, and to blazes with the Holy Synod or any other blamed thing.”

In seeking to have the Sydney Community change its Constitution in order to transfer its spiritual allegiance from the Church of Greece to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Archbishop Knetes inadvertently caused a schism, with the Sydney Sun Newspaper of 18 July 1926 gleefully publishing a photo of the Archbishop with his congregation at St Michael's Anglican Hall, in Surry Hills where he was compelled to perform the liturgy after being locked out of the church of Agia Triada, under the title “Greek Cleavage.”

The worst was yet to come. Kasimatis’ smut and slander, with allegations of homosexual practices and indecent exposure, including incidents in Constantinople bath-houses and the Zappeion Gardens in Athens began to be picked up by the tabloids. Four Sydney Greeks began to publicly accuse the Archbishop of sexual misconduct with visiting British Sailor from HMAS Adelaide. On 26 January 1926, the Archbishop issued criminal libel proceedings against the four men and the matter again was followed closely by the Australian media, which reported on the case in detail, employing sensationalist headlines such as “The Conflict of the Greeks. Allegations of a Put-Up Job” (Truth, Sydney February 1926). The same newspaper on 14 February 1926 published a photograph of the Archbishop trying to hide his face from the camera, and considering the court case, a reflection of the fallen state of the Greek people as a whole, writing in purely orientalist style in “Faded Glory that was Greece”: “Ancient Greece, famous in song and story as the birthplace of culture, knew also the troubled times of internecine strife. But civic differences were conducted on a grand scale then, and concerned no less illustrious personages than Pericles, and such like giants of the past. BUT the glory that was Greece is no more ! Only sordid squabbles and recriminations remain to characterise the tattered remnants of a once splendid race. The conflict between the Australian leader of the Greek Orthodox Church and some of his flock which was aired in the Police Court last week indicate that some, at least, of the Hellenic survivors have departed gravely from the standards of their magnificent past.”

The hapless Archbishop’s humiliation, with allegations about his past paraded blatantly in the public forum of the court, was only partly complete when he lost the case, for in turn, his four accusers issued defamation proceedings against him, in which they were successful, the Archbishop being ordered to pay them £500. Soon after, in April 1926 Ecumenical Patriarch Vasileios announced the recall of Archbishop Christophoros, only for this to be revoked in August, after expressions of support from local Greeks and the intervention of the Greek Consul-General in Sydney, Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos. Meanwhile, the Sydney church was still divided and in conflict. Although the Archbishop had proceeded with the construction of the church of Agia Sophia, described as “the first Greek Orthodox Cathedral in the southern hemisphere,”  in September 1927, the Foreign Minister of Greece Andreas Michalakopoulos demanded the Archbishop’s immediate removal, “for the sake of national and ecclesiastical dignity, even if this involves the abolition of the Archdiocese in Australia.”

Soon after, on 15 December 1927, the Archbishop was knocked down by a speeding motorcycle and his skull was fractured. Unbeknownst to him, on the same day, a committee of bishops appointed by the Ecumenical Patriarch reported that while no incriminating evidence against him had been found, it would be better for the Church in Australia if the Archbishop was transferred to another position.

Appointed titular Metropolitan of Vizyi in Eastern Thrace, Archbishop Christophoros served in that capacity for only a year, notably attending the coronation of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa in 1929 and retiring to Samos a short while later. Despite his harrowing experiences at the hands of the Australian Greeks, he retained an abiding love of the country, even unsuccessfully petitioning the Ecumenical Patriarch for his return.

As we celebrate this year, the centenary of the arrival of the first Greek Orthodox Metropolitan in Australia, it is worth considering the manner of his reception and his ultimate fate, causing us to reflect upon the ensuing clashes of class, influence, ideology of governance, leadership and vision, that ultimately shaped the Greek communities of Australia.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 25 May 2024