Minister of Education, Research and Religious Affairs Kostas Gavroglou gave an interview with ERT, where he referred to the dialogue between Church and State.
As he stressed, “the Government has submitted a comprehensive plan to the Church, but the latter refused to discuss about wages. It did not reject the topic. Refusing to discuss shows weakness.”
According to the Minister of Education, “the plan was result of the State-Church cooperation and I hope that today, at the meeting of the Synod of the Hierarchy, the obsessions of some primates will not lead to its rejection, because this will be a rejection of a historic agreement that the Archbishop had shown the will to proceed with.”
He also clarified that the State is in favor of consensus: “We do not want to get feisty; as we all know, there is a decision of the Council of State saying that clerics are not civil servants. May God help the Hierarchy today,” he noted.