Funding for pandemic-hit religious organizations

The government will be able to provide extraordinary funding to the Church of Greece and other religious organizations in the country, to address the needs that have arisen due to the pandemic.

The relevant legislation submitted to Parliament by the Education Ministry as an amendment to a Health Ministry bill allows the state to pay a one-off extraordinary grant to the Church of Greece, the Church of Crete, the Dodecanese Dioceses, the Central Jewish Council of Greece, religious legal entities and licensed religious communities in order to meet the needs created by the pandemic and support their charitable work. 

“Whoever is legal can benefit from the regulation,” a government official told Kathimerini. 

The pandemic-driven revenue drop has affected the Church of Greece’s approximately 4,500 charities and structures whose staff are not paid from the state budget but from the metropolises’ own resources.