09:09

In Greece, calls are growing for the Greek Orthodox Church to listen to scientists on the issue of how best to deal with Covid-19 after it refused to suspend ecclesiastical services and sacred rites such as holy communion.

Debate over the church’s stance intensified after its governing body objected to any suggestion that the novel coronavirus could be transmitted when worshippers participated in shared rituals such as communion.

In a statement on Monday, the Holy Synod announced “with a sense of responsibility” that it would continue to hold services and conduct the sacrament despite public health concerns raised by the issue of shared chalices.

“For the members of the church, attendance of the divine eucharist and the shared cup of life, of course cannot be a cause of transmission of illness,” the body of senior clerics said in the statement. “Believers of all ages know that attending communion, even in the midst of a pandemic, is both a practical affirmation of self-surrender to the living god and a potent manifestation of love, which vanquishes every human and perhaps justified fear.”



Medical authorities, including the federation representing doctors’ unions, have decried what they described as the obscurantism of clerics invoking religious belief as a bulwark against the virus.



Possibly because of its influence as one of the most powerful institutions in a country where church and state have yet to be separated, the centre-right government has been slow to condemn the stance.

When asked during an interview on state-run TV what Greeks should do, Dora Bakoyannis, the former foreign minister and sister of the prime minister, Kyrakos Mitsotakis, said science had spoken and had to be listened to.

“I am a person who listens to experts and experts are saying very specific things, such as this virus is transmitted through human contact, through saliva etc,” she told the station. “Science has spoken,” she added, welcoming the news that some bishops were considering conducting open air services in the run-up to Orthodox Easter.

While the church has warned the faithful against kissing icons or clerics’ hands – traditions in eastern Orthodoxy – some say it is not enough.

Elias Mossialos, a professor of health policy at the London School of Economics, argued in an article for the Greek daily Ta Nea that the time had come for religious people to follow services on TV. “Vulnerable groups of believers who are the majority of those who go to church,” he wrote, referring to the older generation, “should watch services on television and holy communion should stop for the duration of the epidemic.”