Bishop to sue anti-vaxxers who labelled him ‘sell-out, antichrist, mason’
A metropolitan bishop in northern Greece has filed an lawsuit against two people who claimed on social media that he had banned the burial of people who died from coronavirus and was a “sell-out, antichrist [and] freemason.”
Pavlos, metropolitan of Drama, claimed the posts insulted and defamed him and disseminated fake news.
Police subsequently located and arrested the two accused, who were led before a prosecutor, who ordered them to stand trial before releasing them.
In the meantime, the two apologised for their posts, which they removed from social media.
Metropolitan Pavlos, however, said he would proceed with the lawsuit. Speaking to reporters after a meeting with the prosecutor, the cleric urged churchgoers to take all precautions when entering certain churches where priests do not follow the required preventative measures and even urge their congregations not to take the vaccinate.
He said that the first offensive post about him claimed he banned the burial of people who had died of coronavirus while the other person had posted his photo with the comment “Here is the sell-out, antichrist, freemason.”
The cleric described the accusations against him as the “most serious one could level against a priest or even a bishop. That is, that I have been bribed by someone, that I am the antichrist, when I follow Christ’s way in the local church, and that I am a freemason.”
He appealed to vaccine-hesitant priests to get vaccinated so that can serve as a “good model to Christians.” [AMNA]
