A new chapter in Church-state relations more-or-less emerged yesterday, in the wake of a permanent Holy Synod decision to reject the current government’s proposal for a change in clerics’ payroll regime — as well as a proposed constitutional revision aimed at enshrining the state’s so-called “religious neutrality”.
Church hierarchs stressed that dialogue with the education and religious affairs ministry’s leadership cannot include the payroll issue.
The development attracted an angry response by the ministry’s leadership, with a released statement saying that “…the prime minister and the Archbishop had made it clear that the axis of the agreement comprise a unified entity and cannot be divided.”
The statement refers to an agreement, in principle only, between Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, His Beatitude Ieronymos II, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras last autumn.
The Archbishop merely noted that “… let the minister say whatever he wants, and we will say our. God willing”, in a statement given to the Orthodoxia news agency on Wednesday.