From April 20 to 22, His Grace Bishop Sotirios (Trambas), who has served in Korea as a missionary priest from Greece since 1975, and Protopresbyter Daniel Na, pastor of St. Paul Orthodox Church in Incheon, journeyed into the normally closed country of North Korea.  They met with the Chairman Mr. Il Jin Huh (George) and Vice Chairman Mr. Chul Kim (Peter) of the organization which is building the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Dong-Baik Dong, Pyung-Yang City to discuss mutual cooperation.  The church is scheduled to open in April 2005.
 
Mr. Huh and Mr. Kim are likely the first native Orthodox Christians in North Korea in many years.  They were baptized in January in Moscow where four other North Koreans are now studying to become Orthodox priests next year.  Orthodoxy was welcomed into the North following a visit some months ago by the country’s leader to the Russian Far East where he toured Orthodox churches.
 
A member of the St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral in Seoul reported that on his way in to North Korea, Bishop Sotirios had his cell phone confiscated at the border.  They returned it only when he left to go back to South Korea.  As a result, the hierarch was out of contact and did not know that half way around the world, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople had created the new Metropolis of Korea, formerly under the Metropolis of New Zealand, and elevated His Grace to be its first Metropolitan.
 
“Word had reached the church here in Seoul,” wrote the cathedral member, “and an impromptu celebration was held on his return Thursday night.  His Grace was informed of the news on his way back to the cathedral.”
 
The enthronement of His Eminence Metropolitan Sotirios will be held on June 20 in the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Seoul.  For more information, see the Church website at www.orthodox.or.kr
 
Founded by Russian missionaries in 1900, the Orthodox Church in Korea maintained the faith despite very difficult times throughout its history.  The long Japanese occupation of Korea after the Russo-Japanese War, World War II, and especially the Korean War caused great hardships for the Church.  Buildings were destroyed and clergy and laity were scattered and in some cases captured and taken to prison camps, never to return. 
 
The Church was reborn thanks to the efforts of Orthodox chaplains serving with elements of the Greek Army stationed in Korea at the end of the Korean War.  The Ecumenical Patriarchate took the Korean Orthodox Church  under its protection in 1956 after the petition by the members of the Orthodox Church in Korea during their General Assembly. More specifically the Holy Synod put the Church under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America.  The Archdiocese provided some support, visits by clergy and hierarchs, and assignment of a missionary priest.
 
In 1970, the Orthodox Church in Korea was placed under the Archdiocese of New Zealand, and its hierarch Metropolitan Dionysios where it has remained until the elevation.  America continued to assist through the Greek Archdiocese Missions Office which became the Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC). Among the significant support provided was assistance in the education of clergy such as Fr. Daniel Na at Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline.
 
Following the arrival of then Father Sotirios in 1975, who was consecrated a bishop in 1993, the Church in Korea has grown from a single small parish in Seoul to six communities throughout the country, each with its own building. Today there are seven local Korean clergymen, one priest from Greece, one priest from Russia, a monastery with one nun and a novice, and over 2500 faithful. His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has visited Korea twice in recent years (1995 and 2000), and much help has come from Greece with volunteers and donations.
 
There is a great opportunity for Orthodox in America to help the Church in Korea. For the first time this year, the Orthodox Christian Mission Center is sending a short-term Mission Team to Korea.  This OCMC Mission Team  will assist in the construction of an Orthodox community center in Chuncheon, as well as witness in several church areas in Korea from August 20 to September 13. The community center is located in a rural village with many elderly residents without families. It is also located near a large city and will serve as outreach to both areas. Volunteers with building skills and/or theological education as well as others are needed for this team. For more information, contact teams@ocmc.org or call (904) 829-5132 or 1-877-GO FORTH (463-6784).

Following is the translation of the Protocol No. 384 Act of the Major Holy and Sacred Resident Synod Convened at the Phanar on April 30, 2004, which accompanied the original Greek text.

Protocol Number 384

Holy Canons ordain that actions which certainly cause harm to canonical order and infringe upon it, in constituting an encroachment on the canonical territory of another Church, should be decried and condemned.

For according to Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, order holds all things celestial and terrestrial together. All are duty-bound to maintain good order for it is the constitutive and cohesive element of peace: especially those presiding over the Churches, who, in full awareness of their own measure and bounds should remain within them. The holy canons of the Church, in perennial concord, enjoin that “a Bishop should not venture to effect ordinations outside of his own bounds in the townships and lands that are not subject to him, against the authority of those that hold such townships or lands”. Those who operate and act beyond their bounds are to be dealt with severely (35th Canon of the Holy Apostles, 2nd canon of the second Ecumenical Council, and others that concur), since by such encroachments on the provinces of others they drive away concord and good order, and confuse the Churches by becoming the tutors and perpetrators of disorder.

The Most Holy Church of Greece, which in the first place wilfully and against the canons seceded from the Constantinopolitan Holy and Great Church of Christ   and presented a bad example to other Churches, realized with the passage of time the crooked path on which she was embarked and contritely asked that she regain the straight and orderly path. Thus on the basis of ecclesiastical and canonical arrangements, the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted her independence and autocephaly by the Patriarchal and Synodical Tome of 1850, which as her supreme ecclesiastical authority designated not some primate but a Permanent Synod, to be mentioned by the Hierarchs of Greece, whilst its President, the Metropolitan of Athens is not vested with the privileges of the head and primate of a church, but with those of the president of a local Synod, the Ecumenical Patriarch remaining her primate, to whom “the Holy Synod of Greece [should] refer on ecclesiastical matters that concern both and require joint deliberations and joint action ..., and the Ecumenical Patriarch with the Holy and Sacred Synod about Him willingly vouchsafes his participation, announcing what must be to the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece”. The Holy Synod of the new Autocephalous Church obtained full authority to regulate affairs pertaining to internal ecclesiastical administration by Conciliar Acts provided they would not contravene the Holy Canons of the Holy and Sacred Councils or the patrimony of traditional usage or the formulae of the Orthodox Eastern Church.

Then the Septinsular provinces initially, followed by the provinces of Thessaly were fully annexed to the Autocephalus Most Holy Church of Greece, so that “they should be spoken of, and be known by all as conjoined and attached to her, and as being an inalienable part of her” by the Patriarchal and Conciliar Acts of 1866 and of 1882 respectively, which released them from any dependence under the Ecumenical Throne.

But subsequently, after the disaster of Asia Minor and the flight or exchange of populations, as times and circumstances took a turn for the worse, and threatened the very existence of the Holy Great Church of Christ, this common Mother and protectress of the Orthodox, no longer able to give a gift of her own without incurring danger, made other arrangements in respect of the Provinces of the so-called New Lands by means of an Act appropriate to the occasion and circumstances, with the consent of those in charge of the Race, so that the Mother who from the beginning has born fair progeny, who has thrived as a vine in the gables of the house of the Lord and has lavishly and unstintingly provided, by diminishing her own but not thereby becoming destitute, so that she might wither not and perish not but continue to perform her role as the Church with the prime throne amongst the Orthodox, ministering to their unity and commonweal, and continuously, through history as well as in the present, magnifying the Race of the Greeks and of the Orthodox generally. If other nations possessed this most ancient, unique and majestic institution of the Ecumenical Throne they would do their utmost to reinforce it and to increase its status and its influence.

Therefore to this purpose the ecclesiastical provinces that have been mentioned of Crete, the New Lands and the Dodecanese, to which should be added the Holy Mountain Athos and the other Holy Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monasteries in Greece continue under various degrees of dependence to constitute canonical territory of the Church of Constantinople which, until now, has not ceded her full jurisdiction over them to any other Church , nor is she intending so to do. They all lie within the canonical boundaries of the Church of Constantinople. In consequence, the person who proceeds with elections and ordinations of Bishops without the opinion and consent and agreement of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,  who acts thus arbitrarily and without invitation, perpetrates the most grievous canonical offence of acting beyond his bounds and outside his see, thus encroaching on another’s provinces, and usurping and robbing another’s rights.

 Now, wherefore His Beatitude Christodoulos, our brother the Archbishop of Athens, from the moment of his accession to the Archiepiscopal Throne of Athens, repeatedly and frequently did wilfully transgress against the Patriarchal and Synodical Tome of 1850 on the one hand, by seeking to be mentioned as Primate both within the Autocephalous Church of Greece and in the New Lands without the concurring opinion of the Holy Great Church of Christ, and against the Patriarchal and Synodical Act of 1928 on the other hand by failing to observe its Terms and, despite the express and stated objection of the Ecumenical Throne, by intervening arbitrarily with the ordination of Bishops in those provinces, wherein the supreme canonical rights of the most sacred Ecumenical Throne remain entire, and wherefore by all he does, despite the warnings and canonical claims of the Mother Church, he persists in disorder, and harms himself and the pleroma of the Church, becoming thus the cause of scandal and division in the Hierarchy and the laity, and therefore, in order to arrest any further progress of this evil, and in the hope of achieving the  swift restoration of canonical order which has been disturbed:

a) we deem the recent elections and translations to be invalid, having been held and effected in violation of the specific Terms of the Act of 4 September 1928, through acts passing beyond proper bounds and impinging within an another’s jurisdiction, and consequently un-canonically, and the holy sees of Thessaloniki, Eleftheroupolis, and Servia and Kozani still vacant;

b) with unutterable sadness and pain we resolve the interruption of communion with His Beatitude Christodoulos, Archbishop of Athens, his name being stricken from the Diptychs of our Holy Great Church of Christ, and himself being rendered unable to commune with us, or with the clergy and monks who are subject to our Church, either in worship or in administration;

c) we enjoin those thus “elected” not to assume their provinces: otherwise  communion will be interrupted with them as well;

d) we earnestly beg the Honourable Hellenic State not to assist in the dissolution of canonical order by the promulgation of the pertinent Presidential Decrees;

e) we express the most intense displeasure and sorrow of the Mother Church to those Hierarchs of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, fortunately few in number, who assisted in the “ordinations” of those thus elected; and

f) we make it known that in the event that this canonical anomaly should continue, the Ecumenical Patriarchate will be forced to proceed with the abrogation of the Patriarchal and Synodical Act of 1928.

Thereupon in proof and attestation of the foregoing this, our present Patriarchal and Synodical Act was done, drawn up in this Sacred Codex of our Holy Great Church of Christ.

In the year 2004, the 30th in the month of April
XII in the epinemesis

+ Bartholomeos of Constantinople
+ Chrysostomos of Ephessos
+ Photios of Heraclea
+ Ioannis of Nicaea
+ Aemilianos of Cos
+ Demetrios of America
+ Evangelos of Pergi
+ Kallinikos of Lystra
+ Gregorios of Thyateira and Great Britain
+ Gennadios of Italy
+ Jeremias of Switzerland
+ Constantinos of Derkai
+ Germanos of Theodoroupolis
+ Avgoustinos of Germany
+ Athanassios of Helioupolis and Theira
+ Germanos of Tranoupolis
+ Pavlos of Sweden and all Scandinavia
+ Panteleimon of Tyroloe and Serention
+ Panteleimon of Belgium
+ Eirinaios of Cydonia and Apokoronos
+ Nectarios of Leros and Kalymnos
+ Chrysostomos of Syme
+ Amvrosios of Karpathos and Kasos
+ Cyrillos of Imvros and Tenedos
+ Apostolos of Miletos
+ Michael of Austria
+ Ioannis of Pergamon
+ Iacovos of Pringeponnesa
+ Eirinaios of Lambi, Syvritos and Sfakia
+ Nectarios of Petra and Cherronesos
+ Meliton of Philadelphia
+ Demetrios of Sevasteia
+ Soterios of Korea
+ Evgenios of Hierapytna and Seteia
+ Eirinaios of Myriophyton and Peristasis
+ Apostolos of Moschonisia
+ Anthimos of Rethymnon and Avlopotamos
+ Emmanuel of France
+ Theoleptos of Iconium
+ Andreas of Arkalochorion
+ Epiphanios of Spain and Portugal
+ Cyrillos of Rhodes