Finland’s Father Mitro Repo – who apart from being a Finnish Orthodox priest is also a Finnish Social Democratic party candidate in upcoming EU elections - may be facing de-frocking and excommunication for his political ambitions.

According to Helsingin Sanomat, Repo has been summoned to a meeting of the Council of Bishops of the Orthodox Church to answer charges under two sections of canonic law from the second and fifth centuries stipulating that a bishop, presbyter, or deacon of the church cannot take on worldly tasks, on pain of removal from his post.

Another rule states that it is not proper for a bishop or presbyter to “surrender to any worldly administrative matters”. Instead, the rule says, he should dedicate his time to ecclesiastical matters, as “nobody can serve two masters”.

Khalkedon
But perhaps even more difficult for Repo is a rule adopted at the Council of Khalkedon in 451 which precludes clerics from taking on military service or worldly offices on pain of excommunication.

Helsingin Sanomat says that Finnish bishops have been in touch with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul over the matter and quotes the head of the Finnish Orthodox Church Archbishop Leo as saying that religious and political service do not mix.

“The canonic tradition of the Orthodox Church takes a negative view of the participation of priests in politics. The background is that of keeping Caesar and God in their own areas. A priest who teaches the truth of God in church cannot, in the same role, move into the field of politics, where the basis of decision-making is never truth, but only necessity,” Helsingin Sanomat quotes Archbishop Leo as saying.