OF ACCOUNTING OF HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE THE METROPOLITAN OF CORFU BASED ON ARTICLE 33 OF THE NEW CRIMINAL CODE
With a historically significant decision taken today by the Single-Member Misdemeanor Court of Corfu (chaired by Mr. Georgiadis and prosecutor Yfanti), His Eminence the Bishop of Corfu, Paxos and Diapontian Islands, Mr. Nektarios, was acquitted in both cases in which he was indicted. March 25, 2020 about the divine communion, as well as for the conduct inside the Holy Temple of Agios Spyridon of the litany of Palm Sunday. The trial ended at noon on Wednesday, October 21, 2020.
Both decisions are of historical importance both for the position of the Church in public life, and for the responsibility of each Metropolitan to preserve the religious identity and tradition of the place. After extensive preparation undertaken by the legal defense of the Metropolitan, headed by Mr. Spyridon Christofilos, Lawyer, L.LM, y D.N. Philosophy and Sociology of Law, for the first time Article 33 of the new Penal Code was put on trial, which takes seriously the issue of the conflict of duties that natural persons experience in the performance of their duties, when this fulfillment conflicts with the law.
This happened in the case of the Metropolitan of Corfu, who felt that both his urge to the faithful to commune in the midst of a coronavirus stemmed from his deep faith in God and his position as hierarch of the Church of Greece, dedicated to the Church from his youth. as well as the rite of the procession of St. Spyridon, inside the sanctuary, on Palm Sunday 12 April 2020, with the minimum required number of priests and agents of the temple, although it came into formal conflict with the letter of the law, such as expressed through the JMCs applied by the Greek state, was what his conscience imposed. As Mr. Christofilos pointed out in a relevant article and testified in his independent allegations, the Penal Code in Article 33 stipulates that “the act is not attributable to the one who committed it if during its execution he was unable to comply with the law due to insurmountable same dilemma due to conflict of duties ”.
With the incorporation of this provision in the new Penal Code, the opinion of professors of Criminal Law who were recognized as the peaks of Criminal Theory [Manoledakis, Magakis, Androulakis, Chorafas and others] was justified and finalized, and many of these progressive views. They firmly and firmly expressed the view that the so-called morally forgivable error should be incorporated into the Penal Code. The morally forgivable error exists when the perpetrator was driven into practice by an experienced inner morality and when that morality is compatible with social morality. For Christian ethics all these progressive people of the spirit have ruled that law owes respect as it concerns an integral part of the prevailing legal social ethics.
These cases that were previously included in the theory of moral forgiveness, such as the inalienable guilt in the case of the tragic dilemma in the conflict of duties, are now actively recognized by the new Penal Code in Article 33, providing a way out and opening a new path in the case law. The court accepted this legal position and acquitted the Metropolitan of Corfu for both cases. His Excellency was defended with special emphasis on the issue of preserving the Corfiot tradition by the lawyer Mr. Giannis Kontos. In his statements after the trial, Mr. Nektarios pointed out that today the Church and Corfu were acquitted. The bishop fights for the clergy and the people and for God. That is why he thanked the noble people of Corfu for the support he provided, his associates, priests and laity.
He especially thanked his lawyers, Mr. Spyros Christofilos for his struggle and the effort he made voluntarily about five months after he took over the case and led it to this new legal path, as well as Mr. Giannis Kontos, who gave aspects of the life of the place that led the court to understand even better the moral dilemmas of the Metropolitan. He thanked the priests and the laity who supported him today in court, as well as all those who through letters, messages and phone calls expressed their love and faith in God. He especially thanked the Metropolitans who came on Monday, the first day of the trial, and the Metropolitan of Vresthenes, who came today to support him. He also thanked the court for the respect and perfection with which it approached the cases. “We say God first,” said Mr. Nektarios. “And God does not abandon man”!
The lawyer, Mr. Christofilos, in his statements, stressed that this is a significant, historic court decision, with great legal depth that expressed the role of the Greek judge as the guardian of constitutional freedoms and expressed the very important for social cohesion “sense of justice”. He acquitted His Excellency on the charge of incitement to misdemeanor because the legal issue is in fact linked to the humanitarian and Christian position for the protection of human life. His Holiness never endangered human life. As for the exhortation to a supposedly false statement about those infamous messages about the exodus of citizens in the coronavirus period, it was an expansive interpretation of what was not provided for sub-cases, such as attending the Church for individual prayer. The call for participation in the divine communion concerns mainly dogmatic content that is protected by freedom of speech and expression and was not intended to endanger public health. Regarding the case of the litany of St. Spyridon, the decision accepted the independent allegations made by him as His Holiness’s lawyer as a result of arduous intellectual toil, based on article 33 of the new penal code which removes the blame based on the experienced morality of the perpetrator. We are very happy and this is a great legal decision!
The lawyer Mr. Giannis Kontos stressed that it is overwhelming for a lawyer and moving to renew his confidence in Greek justice. The way the Greek judges operate creates immense emotion and this was evident with today’s decision.
