Greece’s predominant Orthodox Church has accused the left-wing Syriza Government of “ideological stereotyping” after it claimed the country’s Orthodox dioceses were not paying taxes.
However, a Catholic archbishop told The Tablet the current fiscal system discriminated against Catholics and non-Orthodox minorities. “Our homeland needs a public dialogue on relations between the state and Orthodox Church,” the Orthodox Church’s governing Holy Synod said. “But it needs it to be carried out seriously - not on the basis of personal speculation or ideological stereotypes.”
The statement was issued in reaction to a TV interview on Greece's flagship ERT1 state broadcaster by Konstantinos Gavroglou, Education and Religious Affairs Minister, in which he failed to challenge a reporter's statement that “the people demand taxation of ecclesiastical property”.
However, Archbishop Nikolaos Printezis of Naxos-Tinos-Mykonos, the secretary-general of Greece’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference told The Tablet the current system was unjust, since Orthodox clergy were paid state salaries, while Catholics and other Christian groups were denied legal recognition and faced with much heavier tax burdens.
“Orthodox communities have been given churches all over Europe to help their life and worship, whereas here in Greece, where our parishes can't even provide for their priests, they won't loan us a single room,” he said.
PICTURE: Archbishop of Athens and All Greece and primate of the Orthodox Church of Greece leads a service in the Agios Dionysios Areopagitis church in Athens