Pablo de Ballester

[1] Working in its library, he came across anathemas from the Inquisition against all who supported the autonomous apostolic validity of the Apostle Paul, which he later found to be repeated by popes John XXII, Clement VI, Pius X and Benedict XV.

Orthodox Christianity became increasingly more interesting to Pablo, leading him to buy Greek and Russian books from Western shops, as well as some provided by Archimandrite Benedict Katsenavakis, from Napoli.

In 1953, aware there was still no Orthodox presence in Spain, he contacted the Church of Greece and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, being received in Athens by Archbishop Spyridon of Athens and Metropolitan Dionysius of Servia and Kozani, ordained into the deaconate by the latter in the same year, and into priesthood by Bishop Chrysostom of Marathon.

[1] He was a minister in the Church of Constantinople for five years, and then in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America for eleven more, until in 1970 he was named Titular Bishop of Nazianzus by the Holy Synod presided by Patriarch Athenagoras, being consecrated in the same year in a ceremony presided by Archbishop Iakovos of America, receiving his seat in Mexico.

In a visit to Mexico in 2006, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople asked Metropolitan Athenagoras of Mexico and Central America to transfer the relics of the late Bishop Paul to the Metropolis and be laid to rest in the Cathedral Church of Saint Sophia, in Naucalpan, where a monument is dedicated to him.