In 1998 he declared that "when our ancestors gave the lights of civilization, they [Europeans] were living up in trees". In 2003 he said that "history teaches us Europeans were always out to harm us. Long before the sack of Constantinople, Hellenism had been subjected to the horrible experience of the Franks, who wanted to achieve, by any means possible, its extinction." The latter sentence seems to indicate that the Archbishop extrapolates attitudes of the excommunicated Western sackers of 1204 AD, to all Western Europeans, of all times.