Thirty-two years before he lifted the thousand-year excommunication between Rome and Constantinople — and seventeen years before he became Ecumenical Patriarch — Archbishop Athenagoras Spyrou of America was the subject of a Chicago Municipal Court arrest warrant. This typewritten Greek-language sworn criminal complaint, filed by Archimandrite Christopher Kontogeorgos on November 8, 1933, alleged that the Archbishop had physically assaulted Kontogeorgos a week earlier in Chicago. The court found sufficient cause and ordered the warrant with $1,000 cash bond (roughly $24,000 in 2026 dollars). The criminal case never came to trial — but the document set in motion the eight months of dissident-faction organizing that would, by December, formally produce the Aletheia movement.
Why this document survived in Lazaros’s archive
This is part of Lazaros’s editorial working files for the Aletheia newspaper. The complainant, Archimandrite Christopher Kontogeorgos, was:
- The same priest who issued John Lazare’s 1931 birth certificate on August 28, 1931 in NYC
- One of the five founding signatories of the Aletheia Protocol on December 2, 1933 at Lazaros’s office on West 27th Street
- A member of the same anti-Athenagoras dissident clerical network in which Lazaros operated as the editorial voice through Aletheia
Lazaros, as Director of the Aletheia newspaper (the dissident-faction Greek-American organ), retained a copy of this Chicago criminal filing for his editorial files.
Full text (translated from Greek)
CRIMINAL COMPLAINT of Archimandrite Christopher Kontogeorgos AGAINST the Archbishop of America Athenagoras Spyrou
State of Illinois / City of Chicago Before the Municipal Court of Chicago
CHRISTOPHOROS KONTOGEORGOS, residing at the Morrison Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, declares a criminal complaint to the Honorable Judges of the Municipal Court of Chicago and, being duly sworn and examined, testifies under oath and says:
That ATHENAGORAS SPYROU on the 1st of November 1933 A.D. in the City of Chicago of the aforesaid State, illegally, with intent, malice, and intentional malevolence acted by means of physical force upon the said Christopher Kontogeorgos with mechanical and malicious purpose, by which means he disfigured and disturbed the said Christopher Kontogeorgos.
[In violation of] the law enacted for such a case and against the peace and dignity of the People of the State of Illinois.
The complainant declares and says that he has just and sufficient grounds to believe and does believe that the said ATHENAGORAS SPYROU committed the said offense.
THEREFORE, the said Christopher Kontogeorgos prays that a warrant of arrest be issued against the said ATHENAGORAS SPYROU, in accordance with the Law.
CHRISTOPHOROS KONTOGEORGOS
Signed under oath in my presence today the 8th of November 1933 A.D.
Tzaph A. Siller — Judge of the Municipal Court of Chicago.
The judge’s order
A separate paragraph at the bottom of the page records the court’s response:
“I examined the said complaint and the complainant and find sufficient cause to support it. Leave is granted by the present and it is ordered that a warrant of arrest be issued against the aforesaid defendant. Bond set at $1,000.00 cash.
Tzaph A. Siller — Judge of the Municipal Court of Chicago.”
What this changes about the Aletheia story
The Aletheia dissident movement has long been understood as an editorial / canonical dispute against Archbishop Athenagoras’s centralizing leadership of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. This document reveals that the immediate catalyst was an alleged physical assault — and that a Chicago Municipal Court found enough cause to issue a $1,000 cash-bond arrest warrant against the sitting Archbishop of America three weeks before the formal founding of the dissident newspaper.
The complete causal chain reads:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| November 1, 1933 | Athenagoras allegedly assaults Kontogeorgos in Chicago |
| November 8, 1933 | Kontogeorgos files this criminal complaint; Chicago Municipal Court issues arrest warrant against Athenagoras with $1,000 cash bond |
| Mid-late November 1933 | News spreads through Greek-American clerical networks |
| December 2, 1933 | Aletheia Protocol founded at Lazaros’s office (344 W 27th St NYC) by Kontogeorgos + four other clergy |
| December 11, 1933 | Anti-Athenagoras rally at Palm Garden, NYC |
| August 1935 | Aletheia under Lazaros’s directorship covers the closure of Saint George Greek Orthodox Church of Philadelphia by Athenagoras |
A note on the future Patriarch
Athenagoras Spyrou later rose to the See of Constantinople as Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I (1948–1972) and is best remembered today for his historic 1965 meeting with Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem, where the two religious leaders lifted the mutual excommunications between Rome and Constantinople that had been in force since 1054. In 1933 — twelve years into his American archiepiscopate — he was the subject of a Chicago Municipal Court arrest warrant alleging he had physically assaulted a priest under his canonical jurisdiction. The criminal case appears not to have proceeded to trial (the historical record contains no record of conviction or court appearance by Athenagoras on these charges), but the underlying ecclesiastical conflict it represents directly catalyzed the formal dissident-faction movement that operated through Lazaros’s Aletheia newspaper for the remainder of the 1930s.
The bond amount — $1,000 cash — was equivalent to roughly $24,000 in 2026 dollars.
