The importance and uniqueness of religious tourism are undeniable, Tourism Minister Charis Theocharis told the ANA-MPA.
He stressed that, before the pandemic broke out, the number of people who travelled around the world every year for pilgrimage, religious and spiritual reasons, was estimated at 300 million.
Greece has many important religious monuments. The Christian faith has been expressed in many ways over the centuries, thus monasteries, churches and chapels of great religious and architectural value were built. However, what is important at the moment is to ensure the health of tourists, who travel alone or in groups, as is often the case in religious tourism. “We must fully respect the pilgrims’ need to rejuvenate their faith. But we must equally respect, in accordance with the current guidelines given by infectious disease specialists, the health and the safety of tourists in general,” he pointed out.
The Church of Greece will play an important role in organising and promoting pilgrimage tours, through the actions of the Synodal Office of Pilgrimage Tours. The secretary of the Synodal Office of Pilgrimage Tours, Archimandrite Spyridon Katramados, spoke of the actions regarding the participation of the Church of Greece in several exhibitions and of visiting religious monuments in other countries. He also highlighted that all actions of the Church of Greece regarding the arrival of tourists had been cancelled since the start of March 2020 and added that the situation would remain the same until new guidelines were adopted by the Greek State.
Source: ANA-MPA