This paper examines the dynamic attitude of some hierarchs in Crete during the rising of 1897, as it is presented in the press of the time. At the peak of the drama, with the burning of the Christian district of Chania and the threat of new massacres, certain bishops of Crete went to Athens to request the intervention and protection of the Greek State: Eumenios Xiroudakis, Bishop of Lambi and Sfakia, and, Dionysios Kastrinogiannakis, Bishop of Rethymnon and Aulopotamos, were able to meet leading politicians in order to settle the issue, while Nikeforos, Bishop of Kydonia and Apokoronas, refused to abandon the island completely, seeking refuge at the last minute aboard a ship. The tragic developments also caused the ailing Metropolitan of Crete, Timotheos Kastrinogiannakis, to rush to the capital of the kingdom for consultations with the rulers, but also his early death: his funeral would be another opportunity for the Cretans’ just demands to be highlighted and for the slogan “Union or Death” to be heard in Athens. The explicit turn of the hierarchs of Crete to the national center is not inconsistent with the intense controversy and discontent within the Great Church of Christ, which led to the resignation of Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimos VII in January 1897. Moreover, these ecclesiastical leaders followed and accompanied great streams of refugee from Crete, seeking shelter on the Aegean islands and in Piraeus in order to escape the slaughter of the Turkish troops. The interventions of the Cretan bishops should be considered alongside the shift in attitude of the Greek government, the shipment of troops, munitions and food to the island, and the counterproposal of autonomy by the Great Powers and the subsequent Greek-Turkish war in April 1897.