I was impressed by what was recently said by Catholic Archbishop Nikolaos Foskolos regarding the crisis in Greece.
Archbishop Foskolos is the head of the minority Catholic Church in Greece, comprising 350,000 members in the predominantly Orthodox population.
I remember meeting Archbishop Foskolos of Athens twice, once when I was part of the Caritas Malta delegation at the Caritas Europe conference in Athens. Later, he visited Malta and I met him within the Caritas Malta premises in Floriana. Speaking recently in a Vatican Radio interview, Archbishop Foskolos, who is now 74, stated that Greece was becoming “a colony” of the EU as a result of the irresponsibility of the political class: “We now find ourselves in a truly difficult situation. From the moment we joined the Single Market, our politicians have consumed all the money flowing in from the EU instead of using it in line with EU directives for the country’s development”.
In his view the riots in Greece signalled rising dissatisfaction with the “fraud and irresponsibility of the political class, which had cut the pensions of ordinary people while those who stole from the state never lost a cent. We are becoming an EU colony, where others will take decisions for us – for me as a Greek, this is a very sad prospect. For years the Greeks have treated the EU as a milk cow, that gives money and demands nothing back”.
Mgr Foskolos added that in the field of solidarity the six dioceses and archdioceses of the local Catholic Church had extended their charity works and were currently producing food for over 500 people at two separate soup kitchens in the capital.