President of the Cremation Society to Protothema: “Death is the Church’s heavy industry — It took us 23 years to achieve the obvious”

What does it mean to found the archetypal crematorium successful a state with heavy spiritual roots and beardown traditions similar Greece?
On Direct with Giorgos Evgenidis, Antonis Alakiotis, president of the Hellenic Cremation Society, tells the agelong and achy communicative that led to the opening of Greece’s archetypal crematorium — and how, aft six years of operation, the “final wish” has go a tangible option.

It each began with a promise: Mr. Alakiotis recounts that successful 1996, helium promised his friend, creator Pavlos Moschidis, that helium would enactment to marque cremation imaginable successful Greece.
In reality, however, it took 23 afloat years to flooded the institutional, political, and spiritual obstacles.

The reactions from the Christian satellite were aggravated — arsenic aboriginal arsenic 1917, the Catholic Church had issued a decree against cremation — and the Church of Greece to this time maintains reservations oregon unfastened opposition.

Mr. Alakiotis pointed retired respective captious moments successful the process:
At first, contempt aboriginal efforts, the corresponding measure was not signed nether Alekos Papadopoulos.
In 2004, a caller connection was submitted — Dora Bakoyannis and Miltiadis Evert signed it, but then-Minister of the Interior Kostas Skandalidis refused.
The instrumentality was yet passed successful 2006, acknowledgment to Bakoyannis (then Mayor of Athens) and her interventions with some the Church and cardinal governmental figures specified arsenic Archbishop Christodoulos and Prokopis Pavlopoulos.
Subsequently, protests and governmental indifference delayed its implementation.
In 2009, a Joint Ministerial Decision (JMD) was attempted, and aboriginal the contented was transferred to municipal jurisdiction.

The challenges astatine the municipal level were immense — partially owed to the fear of governmental cost, and partially due to the fact that of administrative and spot complications (for example, the Zografou cemetery was deemed “of chartless ownership” and “encroached”).
The Municipality of Markopoulo initially took a affirmative stance, with a unanimous decision, but the involution of the Bishop of Mesogaia changed things.
As Mr. Alakiotis recalls, “at the caller municipal assembly meeting, the Church surrounded some maine and the politician with curses and insults.”

The First Cremation and the “Gradual Acceptance”

The first authoritative cremation successful Greece took spot connected September 30, 2019, successful Ritsona — that of a pistillate from Crete.
Mr. Alakiotis recalls that her children told him they would person been forced to hide her — contempt her privation for cremation — if they couldn’t find a clergyman consenting to execute the last anointing.

Since then, helium says, demand has risen sharply: they started with astir 2,400 cremations per year, and present the fig reaches 5,000 annually.

Regarding the Church’s opposition, Alakiotis emphasizes:

“Death is the Church’s dense industry,”
referring to the ceremonies, memorial services, and household visits that bring financial and societal ‘profits’ to the spiritual establishment.

As for the future, helium mentioned that a new crematorium successful Thessaloniki is already underway — a improvement that, if completed, volition marque the enactment of cremation accessible passim Greece.