Church of Greece and Tourism Ministry sign protocol on pilgrimage tourism

A cooperation protocol on pilgrimage tourism was signed on Tuesday between the Tourism Ministry and the Church of Greece.Tourism Minister Olga Kefaloyanni stressed that pilgrimage tourism is the most dynamic type of specialized tourism. Moreover, Kefaloyanni outlined her ministry's initiatives to put special weight on specialized and alternative tourism aiming at extending the tourism season and enriching the existing tourism model.

"Indicative of pilgrimage tourism's dynamic," noted Kefaloyanni "is the fact that not only Christians are interested in coming to Greece but also people of other religions and dogmas, which will boost employment and the local communities".
  
On its part the Church of Greece's head of the Synodic Bureau of Pilgrimage Tours, Metropolitan Chryssostomos of Dodoni, noted that the signing of the protocol confirms the state's interest for cooperation in religious tourism.

In October, the Church of Greece and the Church of Moscow signed a cooperation agreement for the development, projection and promotion of pilgrimage tourism.The cooperation agreement was signed in Moscow by Metropolitan Nektarios of Corfu, at the head of a Church of Greece delegation, while a Church of Greece delegation also visited Rome later in the month to collaborate with the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi (ORP), the Vatican's official bureau of pilgrimage tours, in view of the arrival of a large number of Roman Catholic pilgrims to Greece in the coming months following in the steps of St. Paul.

The Orthodox Church of Greece is preparing similar collaborations with the Orthodox Churches of Bulgaria, Cyprus, Romania and Albania with the aim of projecting and promoting pilgrimage tourism. Chryssostomos recently told a press conference that the purpose of the accords is a more systematic collaboration and coordination of actions in the field of pilgrimage tours, which he said were much more than the layman's perception of religious tourism, and is founded on four spiritual axes for the promotion of the religious, historic and cultural wealth combined with the development of an ecological conscience.

"It is proof of the role the Church is called on to play in the course of time, which is not limited to unilaterally meeting the religious needs but extends to an overall confrontation of the problems and crises faced by the people, which frequently characterize entire eras and periods of history," Chryssostomos explained at the press conference.He also noted that great interest has been expressed by private and public agencies in Greece and abroad for collaboration with the Synodic Bureau for the compilation of multi-lingual, digital (CD and DVD format) publications of all the cultural monuments, pilgrimage sites and monasteries of the Church of Greece, adding that tangible and visible results on this were expected in the near future.

SOURCE: ATHENS NEWS AGENCY