A high-ranking priest on the island of Crete decried ‘trash” donations for the victims of the Arkalochori earthquake on September 27. On his social media account, Achimandrite Agathagellos Giannakaris posted that the among the donations sent by people form different parts of the country were “dirty underwear, damaged bed-sheets, wedding dresses and even carnival costumes.
The donations to his church included tons of rags and useless clothing, carnival costumes, ratty blankets, used and laddered stockings, dirty underwear, torn sheets and thousands of damaged shoes.
“Helping means respecting, not clearing out your storage space and wardrobes. There are recycling bins [for that],” he wrote and added pictures of a wedding dress and an astronaut suit to illustrate some of the inappropriate items that were sent to his church.
One commentator noted under the post that even 12-cm high heels shoes were sent to the earthquake victims.
“Hundreds of volunteers are trying to sort through clothes when they could be doing something else. Please. Don’t send rags and trash,” the abbot of the Metropolitan Church of Arkalochori, Kastelli and Viannos underlined in his post.
The Archimandrite has put together a group of over 200 volunteers to help residents who lost their homes and belongings in the 5.8-Richter earthquake.
According to the right-of-centre daily Kathimerini newspaper, the church was worth €700m in 2008. , a former finance minister, reckons the figure is at least €1bn.
Saving for a rainy day .
I wonder if 700 million will pass through the eye of a needle.