Advocates call for removal of top Greek church official

Advocates for sexual abuse victims on Tuesday called for the removal of a top official in the Greek Orthodox church in New England, alleging he was “at least grossly negligent” in supervising a priest who was convicted last year of assaulting a boy in Maine.

 

Verne E. Paradie, a lawyer for the victim in the Maine case, said in a statement that Rev. Father Theodore J. Barbas, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, had an “ethical duty to ensure that this [convicted] priest … was not a predator.”

 

“Barbas failed categorically in this capacity, resulting in lifelong physical, psychological and spiritual damage” to the victim in Maine, Paradie said.

 

Attempts to reach Barbas, and the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, which oversees Greek churches throughout most of New England, were unsuccessful on Tuesday evening.
Paradie was joined Tuesday by the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, and the Lantern Foundation, a non profit that helps fund religious and community service groups, in calling for Barbas’s removal as chancellor.

 

Their demands stem from a case involving Adam Metropoulos, a former Greek Orthodox priest in Bangor, Maine.

 

Matropolous received a 12-year prison sentence last year, with 6 and 1/2 years to serve and the balance suspended, for crimes including the sexual assault of a 15-year-old altar server in 2006 and 2007, according to the Bangor Daily News…. read the rest of the story here