Nikos Filis

Schoolteachers have expressed concern over "divisive" remarks made by Education Minister Nikos Filis that morning prayers and religious activities should be held at the discretion of their teachers.

Educators say this could lead to divisions among them over socially and politically sensitive issues and could even spark disagreements between members of parent-teacher associations.

The Metropolitan of Kalavryta and Egialias Ambrosios blasted Education Minister Nikos Filis over his decision to replace the current religious studies from the school curriculum with a lesson on comparative world religions. The Metropolitan held no bars on Good Friday during his speech at Church, pleading to Christ that Fili’s arm would rot before he signed the decree.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of Greece’s opposition party New Democracy, indirectly turned down SYRIZA’s call for consent, during his address at the party’s 10th convention responding with a smile that ‘the microphones were off’, to a proposal voiced by Education Minister Nikos Filis that SYRIZA was open to cooperate with conservative political forces.

The already tense relations between the two coalition partners in the Greek government, left SYRIZA and right populist ANEL are on shakier grounds than ever.

Responding to Education Minister Nikos Filis’s statements on the need to reform religious studies if they are to remain in the school curriculum, the Panhellenic Association of Theologians released a statement saying that religious should not be used for political reasons.

In an interview to Greek newspaper ‘Kathimerini’, Minster for Education and Religious Studies Nikos Filis said that if religion studies are to remain on the school curriculum as a compulsory lesson then they will have to reform into a lesson of comparative religion and abandon its confessionary nature.

Greek government prepares a plan to integrate refugee children into Greek schools accepting its fate to host for a long time and incorporate large groups of immigrants and refugees in Greece risking to alter the characteristics of many local communities and ignoring the long term implications of that decision, given that many European countries are refusing to share responsibility.

Former Greek Parliamentary speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou has single-handedly caused her old cronies to tremble with revelations that she has written messages by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras concerning the turbulent July-August period of 2015 that led the country to a referendum prior to the government’s U-turn when signing the third bailout package for Greece.

President of Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attended the doxology for the New Year at Dionysiou Areopagitou church officiated by Archbishop Hieronymus.

Archbishop Ieronymos wished a blessed, creative and peaceful New Year.

Deputy Education Minister Sia Anagnostopoulou told daily newspaper, Kathimerini, that she disagrees with the way in which history is taught in Greek schools. “History school books must change,” she said. “Research and the opinions of scientists on history and how it is taught in schools must stop being molded within a national measure.