Seven monks were injured yesterday as rival groups armed with crowbars, sledgehammers and fire extinguishers fought for control of a rebel monastery on Mount Athos, the self-governing peninsula in northern Greece where women are forbidden from entering.

Police said the battle at Esphigmenou monastery erupted when a group of monks loyal to Patriarch Bartholomew I tried to establish a new library on the premises. They were confronted by the resident rejectionist monks, who refuse to recognise Bartholomew’s authority as the spiritual head of 250 million Orthodox believers around the world. The rebels vehemently oppose efforts to improve ties between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Vatican.

The injured were transported by boat off the peninsula. One monk was treated for serious head injuries, two received minor bruises and a fourth had respiratory problems after a fire extinguisher was emptied in his face, local hospital sources said. Three monks were banned from re-entering the sanctuary.

Esphigmenou has isolated itself from the 19 other monasteries perched on serene Mount Athos. Its Orthodox zealots have long hung a banner on its 1,000-year-old walls proclaiming the Pope as the Antichrist. Bartholomew, elected Patriarch in 1991, has made warm overtures to the Vatican, enraging the Greek church’s small but vocal rejectionist wing.

The Abbot of the monastery, Methodius, said last night that his monks had been provoked. “We were attacked and had to respond,” he said. “They should be ashamed to call themselves men of the cloth.” Esphigmenou monastery, one of 20 on Athos, has been the scene of a long-running dispute between Orthodox church authorities and rebel monks. Supplies to the rebels are brought in by supporters using dinghies from the nearby island of Thassos.

Both Bartholomew and Greece’s highest administrative court have ordered their eviction, but the monks have unwaveringly refused to budge.

There have been unseemly monastic fisticuffs at Esphigmenou before. Two years ago Greek television cameras caught a handful of gaunt, black-robed monks pulling each others’ beards, throwing punches and chasing one another down the cobbled alleys simply because a pro-Patriarch monk had the temerity to demand entrance to the cloister.

A few miles to the south is the Vatopedion monastery, where the Prince of Wales seeks tranquillity. The sectarian strike has not spread that far. But the weight of monastic opinion on Mount Athos is not overly warm to Bartholomew, who last month celebrated a joint Mass with Pope Benedict XVI and made clear his resolve to ignore the Orthodox extreme fringe and work to cultivate ties with Rome.

Mount Athos

Seventeen of the monasteries are Greek; the other three belong to other Orthodox nationalities

Sources: inathos.gr; agencies