The present report appeared on Religion News Service on October 10. Our readers who follow the diabolical rhetoric of the Kremlin’s puppet patriarch, Kirill Gundiaev, in support of the invasion of Ukraine will note that he also demonizes LGBTQ people as necessitating the annihilation of an entire country.

Participants take part in a LGBTQ pride march in Podgorica, Montenegro, Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. Several hundred people joined an LGBTQ pride march in Montenegro, held amid strong opposition from the influential Serbian Orthodox Church in the small conservative Balkan country. (AP Photo/Risto Bozovic)

Several hundred people on Saturday joined an LGBTQ pride march in Montenegro, held amid strong opposition from the influential Serbian Orthodox Church in the small conservative Balkan country.

Montenegro’s 10th pride event was dubbed “No more buts,” reflecting demands that more be done to stem hate speech and harassment of LGBTQ community despite huge steps that have been made in the past years. Read More

For context see the Metropolitan Joseph: The Scandal section in our Archives 2020-22 linked at the top of this page.

Bishop John (Abdalah)

Diocese of Worcester and New England, Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese

Chairman of the Temporary Operating Committee

Clergy and laity who had joyfully anticipated the dawn of a new day in the life of the Antiochian Archdiocese—with the expulsion of the dictatorial, adulterous, predatory Metropolitan Joseph Al-Zehlaoui from office and the hope-filled promises of Patriarch John—now report themselves sinking deeper and deeper into a swirling vortex of skepticism, cynicism, anger, and even rage. We are now approaching eight weeks since Orthodoxy in Dialogue published Ms. Helena Ditko’s explosive email (her full name now used with her consent), over four weeks since the Patriarch forced Al-Zehlaoui to “request” “retirement,” one week since we published Al-Zehlaoui’s amorous voicemail referenced in Ms. Ditko’s email, and four days since we published previously widely circulated allegations that Al-Zehlaoui’s most zealous defender (and harshest critic of literally everyone else while dripping with piosity) and presumed paramour, Jasminka Chenich Gabrie, has received from Al-Zehlaoui hundreds of thousands of Archdiocesan dollars over the years through a “monthly salary” and work contracted to her art gallery and remodeling business.

The proverbial straw that threw many of the Archdiocese’s clergy and laity into a rage was the secret report from the farcical “investigation” into allegations against Al-Zehlaoui of sexual predation of women under his spiritual authority and/or in his paid employ. “Investigator” and attorney Paul Gaspari appears to have been instructed by Emile Sayegh, general legal counsel for the Archdiocese, first, to compose a report as explicitly or implicitly exculpatory of Al-Zehlaoui as possible; and second, to time the release of the report to the Holy Synod to coincide with its fall meeting a full four weeks after the “investigation” was ordered suspended.  Read More

For context see the Metropolitan Joseph: The Scandal section in our Archives 2020-22 linked at the top of this page. Whereas all previous leaks to Orthodoxy in Dialogue have come from insider sources at the headquarters of the Antiochian Archdiocese in Englewood NJ, this one comes from a source within the Patriarchate of Antioch. The woman named in the report has courageously given her consent for us to publish it with her name unredacted. See our comments below.

Read More

For context see the Metropolitan Joseph: The Scandal section in our Archives 2020-22 linked at the top of this page.

Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East

Today the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Antioch convenes under the presidency of Patriarch John X. We at Orthodoxy in Dialogue, together with our readers around the world, pray that “the grace divine, which always heals what is infirm and completes what is lacking” (prayer of ordination), descend once again upon the assembly of our fathers in the Faith to reveal to them in all things what “seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit” (Acts 15:28).

As a word of clarification for our readers, this is not an ad hoc meeting to resolve the scandal of the former metropolitan of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Rather, this is the normal semiannual meeting required of each local church’s synod of bishops by the canons. (The other falls during Great Lent.) The matter of Joseph Al-Zehlaoui occupies a place of singular importance on the fathers’ agenda. Read More