Taking A Page From Brother George's Book

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By Newsweek Editors

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When members of the Red Russian Church moved last week to evict a few elderly monks from a disputed monastery in Jericho, they thought it would be a pushover. But they didn't take into account the lineage of one of the monks: Sister Maria, a.k.a. Anastasia Stephanopoulos, the sister of President Clinton's former spinmeister, George Stephanopoulos. She and a fellow nun holed themselves up in the monastery to protect what they claim belongs to the New York-based White Russian Church, which was exiled during the 1917 revolution and is fighting to retain its Holy Land possessions. The Red Church, resurrected by Stalin during World War II, is leaning on Yasir Arafat to hand over the properties.

Though outgunned, the two nuns clearly have the PR edge. Sister Maria transformed her monastic bunker into a multimedia war room, talking to reporters via cell phone and denouncing Red Russians on her Web site. Arafat's soldiers boarded up the gates and prevented the nuns from talking with White priests. But Sister Maria has connections. "George made people aware that he knows," she told NEWSWEEK.

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