Greece’s fiscal and social problems have complex roots – unless you’re Greek Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus, whose explanation takes just three words to summarize: Blame the Jews.

Semites such as “Rockefeller, Rothschild and Soros control the international banking system that controls globalization,” the Metropolite said this week on Greece’s most-watched morning TV show, according to JTA. There is “a conspiracy to enslave Greece and Christian Orthodoxy” by Zionists, Jewish bankers like Baron Rothschild, and Freemasons,” the clergyman said. He also accused “international Zionism” of trying to destroy the family unit by “promoting one-parent families and same-sex marriages.”

When the Mega TV network host asked, “Why do you disagree with Hitler’s policies? If they are doing all this, wasn’t he right in burning them?” Metropolitan Seraphim replied: “Adolf Hitler was an instrument of world Zionism and was financed from the renowned Rothschild family with the sole purpose of convincing the Jews to leave the shores of Europe and go to Israel to establish the new Empire.”

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The president of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, called for the bishop to be fired in a statement sent to reporters on Wednesday, according to The New York Times. And The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants sent this statement to The Times: “Holocaust survivors are aghast at the hate-filled remarks of Metropolitan Seraphim and call on the Greek Orthodox hierarchy to remove him from his position. We also demand that the Greek government prosecute him under its laws against incitement to hatred. Greece itself, which suffered grievously under Nazi occupation, is slandered by Metropolitan Seraphim’s bigotry. His remarks constitute a brutal assault on the memory of all Nazi victims, Jew and non-Jew.”

Sadly, the Metropolite of Piraeus Seraphim “is not the only Greek priest with such extreme ideas,” JTA reported. “Salonika’s Metropolite Anthimos also has preached similar ideas from his pulpit.”

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