The election of Ieronymos as archbishop of Athens took place at a critical moment for the Orthodox Church of Greece (OCG). On the one hand, the social credibility of religious bureaucracy was waning. On the other, a fundamentalist faction within the Synod was essentially questioning his authority. In order to confront these problems, Ieronymos found the necessary social and religious legitimisation via the partial democratisation of the administrative function of the OCG as well as the restoration of its relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople (the Ecumenical Patriarchate). The decoding of this intraecclesial strategy, starting from his election in
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.