Church honours Greek President

The Head of Greece’s Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, honoured the President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopios Pavlopoulos with the Grand Cross of Apostle Paul on Sunday during celebrations of Sunday of Orthodoxy.

Pavlopoulos in turn praised the Church and its social role during the financial crisis at a dinner hosted by Archbishop Ieronymos and the members of the Standing Holy Synod of the Church of Greece.

The President noted that "the harmonic co-existence and cooperation between the State and the Church, according to its role provided by the Constitution, is condition sine qua non for the defence of our history and our country" and wished "the celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy to be the cradle for inspirations, meditations and decisions for the people and the church and of course for its leadership in order to be in condition, as a nation with a unique heritage, to carry out our historic mission. A mission which exceeds the limits of our country and extends inside our major European family and inside the international community in general," he concluded.