As Archbishop Christodoulos yesterday detected a “silver lining” in the cloud of scandal hanging over the Church of Greece, a report said that a senior bishop has been indicted on charges of embezzling over 300,000 euros from Church funds and charities.

According to the Sunday Apoyevmatini newspaper, the Nafplion Council of Appeals Court Judges has indicted Panteleimon, Bishop of Corinth, to stand trial for allegedly siphoning the missing cash into bank accounts in his name and destroying the Bishopric’s financial records to cover his tracks. Another five Corinth priests and the bishop’s female factotum were also indicted.

The 86-year-old bishop allegedly appropriated Church funds between 1993 and 2000, including cash from a girls’ orphanage and an old-age home. Panteleimon is also accused of having falsely claimed that the Bishopric’s financial records were destroyed during the severe floods that afflicted Corinth in 1997. Instead, the indictment said, he ordered an associate to dispose of the potentially incriminating documents in dumpsters on a highway outside Corinth.

Meanwhile, Archbishop Christodoulos claimed the ongoing corruption and sex scandals bedeviling the Church of Greece had their positive side. “Every cloud has a silver lining,” he told an Athens congregation yesterday. “[This crisis] has forced us to examine ourselves and our close associates, and to take action... It affects us, even though we are not immediately involved.”

The scandal, linked with revelations of trial fixing in the judiciary, has forced the Church to dismiss one bishop and investigate several more. Yesterday, outgoing President Costis Stephanopoulos called for “moral sanctions” against corrupt officials in addition to legal penalties. “They should be declared worthless and vile (in court),” he said.