A president for every citizen
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou has been banished – along with the prime minister – from the customary Easter celebrations by the Church of Greece, which has chosen this method of payback for the ratification of the same-sex marriage law. I assume that Sakellaropoulou’s transgression was attending an event with members of the government on the night that the bill was passed by Parliament. I’m still trying to understand why some people saw her presence at the event as a “provocation.” She has always been a fervent champion of human rights. Asked about the issue at Kathimerini’s recent conference on democracy, she said, “If some people are offended because another group of people enjoys the same rights as they do, then they obviously have the wrong end of the stick – I believe.”
Some people may indeed have been upset, or believe her to be overly “woke”; others may denounce her as being pro-government and many more that she is not religious or patriotic enough. Personally, I didn’t like the fact that she took a photograph in front of the fence on the Evros border with Turkey, a symbol of “Fortress Europe.” And that she didn’t choose a different background, one that expressed an open and modern perception of migration as a phenomenon rather than a crisis. I would also have liked her to have taken a firmer stance on the wiretapping affair, as she has done on other issues related to the rule of law.
The president of the republic’s mission, however, is not to satisfy our individual ambitions, but to reconcile conflicting national narratives. Her objective, among others, is to support marginalized minorities, not to engage in populism and pander to the majority. It is also to express the country’s national identity at this given time.
What is Greece? It is a modern European country that strives for social justice, inclusiveness and equal rights for its citizens. That is the message the president sent.
Is this reason enough for the Church ban? I don’t think so. As opposed to the clergy, the president did not try to spread hate; she was offering love. As opposed to some bishops, she did not say that homosexuality is a “psychiatric illness” (Nicholas of Mesogeia), or “the safest way to carcinogenesis” (Seraphim of Piraeus), or that homosexuals are “sick” and “perverted” (Alexandros of Mantineia and Kynouria, who died in December).
She shared the joy of a group of our fellow countrymen and women who had been on the sidelines for too long. Her immediate reaction to the mob attack in Thessaloniki on two transsexual individuals showed her consistency on such matters.
