Athens, August 8, 2016

Petraki Monastery in Athens was pelted with Molotov cocktails and the Greek government has already condemned the act of vandalism, reports RIA-Novosti.

Four Molotov cocktails were hurled into the monastery at about 3:00 AM. The fire damaged four automobiles in the monastery courtyard where offices of the Synod of the Church of Greece and the archbishopric are located.

Petraki Monastery in the Kolonaki (literally: “little column”) district of Athens was founded in the seventeenth century, but a church on its territory had been built as early as the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. The monastery frescoes were painted in the eighteenth century.

“The competent authorities have already taken necessary measures for finding the culprits and bringing them to justice,” an official statement of the Greek government spokesperson Olga Gerovasili reads.

“Freedom of religion and free performance of religious rites are guaranteed by the Constitution and firmly safeguarded by the state,” O. Gerovasili said, stressing that any forms of violence would not be tolerated, reports RIA-Novosti.

“Our wish is that the Lord forgives these criminals,” a statement of the Synod of the Church of Greece reads.

A number of Orthodox churches and monasteries in Greece were attacked over the past few days. Last week twenty-six anarchists burst into a church of the Thessaloniki Metropolis during a service and started destroying what they could. Later they were acquitted by the court. There was also an incendiary attack against one church in the city of Heraklion in Crete along with attacks on two churches in Exarcheia, a neighborhood of Athens. The Black Flame anarchist group is claiming responsibility for the two latter attacks.