Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Tuesday afternoon, for the first time since strict lockdown conditions were enacted in the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, acknowledged that this year’s Easter will be different – an allusion to the fact that restrictions on the non-essential movement in public will, by all accounts, be extended to Easter Holy Week and beyond.
Easter Sunday this year for Orthodoxy falls on April 19.
It is amid the ongoing global Covid-19 crisis that members of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Greece’s Holy Synod convened today, via teleconference.
Hierarchs of the Church of Greece have requested that the Divine Liturgy, daily services and the Great and Holy Week or “Passion Week liturgical calendar be conducted in cathedrals around the country, even without worshippers.
According to sources that spoke with the Orthodoxia news agency, the Church of Greece also wants the state’s support against what it deems as unacceptable and blasphemous statements by some quarters in opposition to the sacrament of the Holy Communion.
