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.In 1627 Lucar founded the first Greek press in Constantinople; but the Jesuits at once reported to the Grand Vizier that the press was intended to combat Mohammedanism, and a hundred and fifty Janizaries immediately raided and destroyed it.Had it not been for the intervention of the English ambassador, Cyril himself would also have been destroyed; but if he was spared this time, it was only to fall a victim later to the calumny of the Jesuits, who falsely accused him of conspiring secretly with the Cossacks towards the revolt of the Greeks against the Turks.For the fifth and last time he was deposed from his Throne, and after embarking on a boat that was ostensibly to take him into exile, he was drowned by his guards in the waters of the Bosphorus.The murder of Lucar, for which, according to Ricaut, Rome paid the sum of 30,000 crowns, will always remain as an indelible stigma on the Papacy.Papism in Palestine and Syria.The conduct of the Roman Catholics in other centers of Orthodoxy differed in no wise from their behavior in Constantinople.In Palestine, where they had possessed no rights until the sixteenth century, when the Patriarch Dorotheos (1493-1634) first granted them a monastery as a favor, they lost no time in setting on foot their machinations.Thus under the Patriarch Sophronius (1579-1608) we see them offering the Turks six thousand florins, through the medium of the French Ambassador, to evict the Orthodox from Calvary and the Cave; whereupon Sophronius, to preserve his rights over the Holy Shrines, was obliged to offer the Turks double that sum.In 1633, in the reign of Sultan Murad, another similar attempt was made, accompanied by a forged golden bull, and lavish presents to the Sultan and Vizier; and though this, too, ended in failure, because the forgery was discovered, the Papist never ceased to put forward new claims, until in 1847 they succeeded in restoring the Roman Patriarchate which had been established for a short time during the Crusades.The same policy was followed by the Papists in Syria, where in the first half of the eighteenth century they managed to win over two native Patriarchs of Antioch, Cyril and Seraphim, and to found the Patriarchate of the “Greco-Melchites.” To this day, Jesuit colleges, lavishly supported by subscriptions from France, continue to foster the propagation of Roman Catholicism.Papism in Russia and in Less Distant Countries.Thanks to the activities of the Jesuits, Orthodoxy was also persecuted in the south of Russia, when a false union with Rome was declared at Brest in 1594, while two Russian apostates, Potzeus and Terleski, traveled to Rome and kissed the Pope's toe, claiming that they did so on behalf of the whole body of the Russian Church.Not only here, but in Red Russia, Volhynia, Lithuania and Galicia, too, the Orthodox were mercilessly persecuted by the Catholics.And if Papist rage reached out so far and so widely, it may well be imagined how Rome behaved towards the Orthodox Christians in countries closer to her.In the Ionian Islands, she did not allow Orthodox bishops, but only priests, who were obliged to be present at the enthronement and funeral of Roman Catholic bishops.The Orthodox colony in Venice, who had fled there at the fall of Constantinople, were forbidden to have their own church until 1553, when the Republic of Venice, for commercial reasons, gave them the necessary permission.The Orthodox inhabitants of Hungary, Slavonia and Croatia, who had migrated thither from Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly and Greece in 1687, were allowed by the Jesuits to use their own language and service but forced to recognize papal supremacy; while the Greco-Italians of Calabria, Sicily, Tuscany and Geneva were gradually absorbed into the Roman Church by means of the Jesuitical “accomodatio.”The Papal Unia in Greece Today.Right up to the present day, the Papists have persevered in the use of these same methods, in spite of their proved futility; and the “Unia” is, indeed, their dearest weapon of attack.Catholic priests of foreign nationalities, who have adopted Greek names and dress like the Greek clergy, appear in the midst of Athens itself, and try to pass themselves off as Orthodox priests.Their churches are impeccably Byzantine in style; their ritual is also Byzantine, and the liturgical language the Greek of the Gospels.On one point only (for the present at least) do they differ from Orthodox usage: they commemorate the name of the Pope in their prayers, as Supreme High Priest and Pontifex
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