The founding charter of the Aletheia dissident movement against Archbishop Athenagoras Spyrou’s leadership of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Signed at Lazaros’s editorial office at 344 West 27th Street, New York City on December 2, 1933 — twenty-four days after the Chicago Municipal Court arrest warrant had issued against the Archbishop, nine days before the Palm Garden rally that would carry the new movement public. Five founding members signed:
- Lazaros Yannopoulos — first signatory and office host; Director of the Aletheia newspaper that emerged from this charter
- Kleanthis Vassardakis — lay member
- Archimandrite Christophore Kontogeorgos — the same priest who issued John Lazare’s 1931 birth certificate, and who three weeks earlier had filed a Chicago criminal complaint and obtained an arrest warrant against Archbishop Athenagoras
- Archpriest Panayiotis Stamos (Παναγιώτης Στάμος) — Archpriest
- Archimandrite Vassileios Leventis (Βασίλειος Λεβέντης) — Archimandrite
Why this document survived
This is the founding-day document of the editorial movement Lazaros would direct for the rest of the 1930s. It survived because it lived in Lazaros’s own editorial office at 344 W 27th St, NYC — the same office where the Aletheia newspaper was edited and which served as the headquarters of the dissident faction. Eleven months after this charter, the Aletheia of August 1935 was being addressed by parish presidents as “Mr. Lazaros Yannopoulos, Director of the newspaper ‘H ALETHEIA’, New York” — the role this charter formally launched.
The geopolitical chain of events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| November 1, 1933 | Athenagoras allegedly assaults Archimandrite Kontogeorgos in Chicago |
| November 8, 1933 | Kontogeorgos files criminal complaint; Chicago Municipal Court issues $1,000 cash-bond arrest warrant against Athenagoras |
| Mid-late November 1933 | News spreads through Greek-American clerical networks |
| December 2, 1933 | Aletheia Protocol founded at Lazaros’s office (this document) by Kontogeorgos + four others |
| December 11, 1933 | Anti-Athenagoras rally at Palm Garden, NYC |
| 1933-1935+ | Aletheia newspaper editorial campaign under Lazaros’s direction |
| August 1935 | Aletheia covers the closure of Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Philadelphia by Athenagoras |
The Protocol comes nine days before the famous December 11, 1933 Palm Garden rally and was the organizational backbone for it. It also follows by twenty-four days the Chicago arrest warrant against Athenagoras — making the Aletheia movement a direct organizational consequence of the alleged Chicago assault. Lazaros, the only lay signatory along with Vassardakis, served as host and first signatory because the editorial office was his.
