Archbishop Ieronimos II of Athens

Ieronymos II (, ; born 30 March 1938) is the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece and as such the primate of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece. He was elected on 7 February 2008.

Ieronymos served as Protosyncellus of the Metropolis of Thebes and Livadeia, abbot of the monasteries of the Transfiguration of Sagmata and Hosios Loukas, and Secretary, later Archsecretary, of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece. In 1981, he was elected Metropolitan Bishop of Thebes and Levadeia. He published two major textbooks: "Medieval Monuments of Euboea" (1970), and "Christian Boeotia" (2006).

On 7 February 2008, Ieronymos was elected the new Archbishop of Athens and All Greece by the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, He formally took office on 16 February 2008.

Early life and background Ieronymos was born in Oinofyta, Boeotia and is of Arvanite descent.

Ieronymos holds degrees in archaeology, Byzantine studies, and theology from the University of Athens. He has undertaken postgraduate studies at the University of Graz, the University of Regensburg and LMU Munich.

Following a stint as lector in Christian archaeology at the Athens Archaeological Society under professor Anastasios Orlandos, he taught as a philologist in Lycée Léonin and he was ordained deacon and then presbyter in the Orthodox Church in 1967. receiving 45 out of 74 votes in a two-ballot process. He formally took office on 16 February 2008.

Social and political views

In 2012, Ieronymos criticized racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Golden Dawn party, saying that "The church loves all people, including those who are black, white or non-Christians."

On 16 April 2016, he visited, together with Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Mòria camp on the island of Lesbos, to call the attention of the world to the refugee crisis.

On 16 February 2024, when gay marriage was legalized in Greece, he condemned the new law as a "new reality that seeks only to corrupt the homeland's social cohesion."

Notes and references

Bintliff, John (2003), "The Ethnoarchaeology of a "Passive" Ethnicity: The Arvanites of Central Greece" in K.S. Brown and Yannis Hamilakis, eds., The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories, Lexington Books. .