Athens, August 26, 2011
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According to Sky’s business presenter Jeff Randall regarding a special programme on Greece’s financial woes, Constantinos Dimtsas described the added pressures the Church were facing in the provision of help for the poor. ”We are at the beginning of the wave. At this moment, we just learnt that the tsunami is coming. In September we will see it, and next year we will see the results,” he said.
The Church runs a number of feeding stations and shelters around Greece through a project known as ‘The Mission’. Due to the crisis, more and more Greeks visit these places seeking help. ”About 60% of the beneficiaries are now people of Greek origin, while two years ago the statistics were inverse. We had 25-30% Greeks and the rest were immigrants.” Mr Dimtsas said. ”We are handing out 10,000 meals per day. We’ve been doing it for the last three months in order to confront the financial crisis”. ”The tragedy is the increase in ages – unemployed people who are over 45 and cannot find a job again, and older people who are suffering lately from the reduction of their pensions,” he added.
The Church is the largest landowner -after the state- in Greece, today.
“The church has flatly refused to give a full description of its landownings because they know if people know what they are, they’ll ask, ‘why don’t we tax them?’, Mr Dimtsas stated. The former finance minister Stephanos Manos once had said that ”many Greek politicians were keen to keep influential religious leaders on their side, resulting in special treatment for the Church”.
But the Orthodox Chruch disputes such accusations. Mr Dimtsas noted that these accusations are totally false, as the Church pays all itstaxes and added that since 1952 the Church had given 92% property to the state, which he claims was wasted. Of what remains, at least its 70% is woodland and therefore not of use to the Church.
“The Archbishop of Athens says that this crisis is not financial, but spiritual. Mainly the crisis is in our minds, and has been created from the over-consumption of the Greek people. “This, in my opinion, is the source of the evil,” he concluded.
