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Orthodox leader in Georgia apologizes for attack on minority churcheS
2003-122B
6/3/2003
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[Episcopal News Service]
An Orthodox church leader in the former Soviet republic of Georgia has apologized after appearing on television and urging Georgians to kill members of minority churches.
Orthodox Metropolitan Atanase of Rustavi met Malkhaz Songulashvili, president of Georgia's Union of Evangelical Baptists, on May 18 and apologized for televised remarks in February in which Atanase said Orthodox Christians should 'fight and kill' Baptists, Anglicans, Protestants, Pentecostalists and Jehovah's Witnesses.
The metropolitan's remarks were denounced by the Georgian Orthodox Church, whose spokesperson said the church had been 'astonished' by what Atanase said, the Keston News Service reported.
'We don't need sects--we are a pure Orthodox nation,' the metropolitan had told Georgian television viewers. 'You should destroy not only their computers--they have to be shot dead. Had it been in the old times, I would have thrown them all in jail.' Minority churches have repeatedly complained of harassment in Georgia, whose Orthodox church claims the loyalty of 70 per cent of the country's more than 5 million inhabitants.
Atanase's meeting with Songulashvili in May followed a letter of apology delivered the previous month to the central Baptist church in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, in which Atanase wished 'long life' to Songulashvili, who he described as a 'holy and great man, one of the leaders of a great church.'
Songulashvili said after the meeting on 18 May that he was 'surprised and delighted' by the metropolitan's apology. 'He kept saying he never meant to do anything against Christian churches here,' Songulashvili said in an interview with ENI. 'Although I've no clear picture why he apologized, it's enough that he made this gesture.'
Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze, had ordered measures earlier this year to protect small churches after a Baptist church in the capital was attacked by followers of a defrocked Orthodox priest.
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