abstract
| - He was born on September 21, 1871, in the village of Parsas on the island of Crete. He entered the Seminary of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem in 1889. He was tonsured with the name Meletius and ordained a hierodeacon in 1892. He completed the theological courses at Holy Cross and was assigned as secretary to the Holy Synod in Jerusalem by Patriarch Damianos in 1900. Meletius was evicted from the Holy Land by Patriarch Damianos, along with the then-administrator Chrysostomos, later Archbishop of Athens, in 1908 for "activity against the Holy Sepulchre." Meletius Metaxakis was then elected Metropolitan of Kition in Cyprus in 1910. In the years before the war, Metr. Meletius began successful talks in New York with representatives of the Episcopal Church of America, with the intention of "expanding relations between the two Churches." After the death of Patriarch Joachim III on June 13, 1912, Meletius was nominated as a candidate for the Patriarchal Throne in Constantinople. However, the Holy Synod decided that Meletius could not canonically be registered as a candidate. Instead, he would continue in his metropolis until 1918 when, with the support of his political allies, he was elevated to the position of Archbishop of Athens in 1918. This would be a temporary measure, for after a series of political changes in Greece, he was later deprived of his see.
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