In the past, explains mgr. Papamanolis, "such damages were put down to some unknown drug addicts. As it seems, though, they should instead be put down to people who want to have the Catholic cemetery moved away or disappear from Chanià. To all of them, we say: Respect the memory of the dead. To the Government, but especially to the Ministers of Justice and Police, and to the local authorities, we ask for the protection of the law. When something similar recently happened in the Orthodox Cemetery of Constantinople, our Government turned it into a problem of national relevance. And that was right. But when, on two previous occasions, our Cemetery of Chanià was damaged by sacrilegious people and invading vandals, no authority did anything, they hushed up the problem and did nothing to repair the outrage to the memory of the dead, and they did not even help us compensate the damage. Don’t the bones of the Catholic Christians deserve as much respect as do the bones of our Orthodox brothers? We ask the Ministries of Justice and Police concludes Papamanolis to protect us, because the injustices we suffer as a Catholic Church, especially in Crete, are building up and multiplying. For how much longer?".
