Changements dans le financement de l’Église orthodoxe

• May 2023

By the presidential decree 14 of February 15, 2023 (Governmental Gazette A 30), the government has now accepted the long-standing Orthodox Church’s demand to increase the number of Orthodox priests. Under a 1945 law which organised the Church-State relations in financial matters, the number of priests was set at 6,000. In due course, this number was increased to over 8,000 but without any legal provision, these additional places were at risk. The decree set the number of priests at 8 311, which satisfies the Orthodox Church. It was also decided that vacancies caused by death, retirement or resignation could be filled by other priests. Until now, in such cases, the surplus of 2,311 places remained vacant. Finally, it was decided that if the Orthodox Church wished to hire more priests to cover its needs, this could be done through Church funding, without the State taking over their salaries.
This is the first time that the exact number of priests and their positions have been fixed by a presidential decree.
In total, the number of priests in Greece is 9,543, since in addition to the 8,311 priests mentioned above, there are 955 priests of the Church of Crete and 277 of the Dodecanese, who are mentioned separately because of their canonical link with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.