Abbot of Varlaam Monastery reveals: “Everything Madonna asked me”

By IASONAS TSOLIS*

“Madonna had many questions; she had metaphysical and spiritual concerns. She asked me many questions.  I think something deep within her was touched —obviously, by the place she had come to visit.” With these words, the abbot of the Holy Monastery of Varlaam in Meteora, Archimandrite Fr. Benedict Zacharakis, describes Madonna’s visit to the monastery, speaking for the first time exclusively to Orthodoxi Alitheia.

“Above all, she wanted to discover another aspect of faith.  She asked me about prayer and about my prayer rope. I told her that the shortest and most important prayer is ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,’ which acknowledges the omnipotence of Jesus. She was very pleased. But what she said at the end was, in a way, her complaint. She said that the visit had not been organized well enough and that she wished she had had more time. ‘I wanted to stay longer; I needed more time here,’ she told her associates,” Fr. Benedict says.

On Friday, August 14, the eyes of the world shifted from the bright lights of the international music scene to the towering rocks of Meteora in Greece. Madonna, just days before her 68th birthday, left behind the…