The Holy Synod, the Church of Cyprus most senior institution, ratified on Monday evening the results of the 24th September election process for a new Archbishop after an all day session where objections to the election of the special representatives were dismissed.
The announcement was made by Acting Primate of the Church of Cyprus, Bishop of Pafos Chrysostomos who said the next phase in the process to elect a new primate will be on 15 October when the 1,400 Special Representatives elected will vote for 100 General Representatives.
The Acting Primate said the members of the Holy Synod heard today a number of witnesses who testified on the objections raised on the election process as well as the counting of the votes. He remarked that the civil servants who were assigned to help in counting the votes said the elections were held in an excellent manner. The objections were thus dismissed and the church elections were ratified after three members voted in favour, two against and one abstained.
The elections are organized, monitored and carried through by church officials. The contenders of the top post in the church hierarchy are: the Bishop of Pafos Chrysostomos, the Bishop of Kition Chrysostomos, the Bishop of Limassol Athanasios and Kykkos Monastery Bishop Nikiforos.
Pafos bishop elected 125 special representatives, Kition bishop 19, Limassol bishop 641 and Kykkos bishop 615. This leaves bishop of Kition Chrysostomos out of the race, with the remaining three bishops contesting the post in earnest. The 1,400 special representatives are allocated, according to the church charter, as follows: 400 for the Archbishopric district that includes Famagusta district, and 200 for each of the metropolitan districts of Pafos, Larnaca, Kyrenia, Limassol and Morphou.
The new archbishop will replace the ailing Archbishop Chrysostomos, who has been incapacitated for the past several years. The sick clergyman succeeded the late Archbishop and first President of the Republic of Cyprus Makarios III, who died on August 3, 1977. Since Chrysostomos’s illness, the Church has been run by the acting primate of the church, Pafos Bishop Chrysostomos.
