The Pope too has backed the Greek Catholic Church that for years has been pressing the government to recognise its legal status. The lack of such status causes as the official website of the Catholic Church underlines “numerous problems”. By making this request, “the Catholic Church claims no privilege, but equality”. The Catholic community in Greece comprises some 50,000 faithful, though it has been sharply increasing in recent years following the arrival in the country of large numbers of Catholic immigrants, especially Philippinos (45,000) and Poles (40,000). The request for legal status has been regularly made in past years both by the Greek Catholic Church and by the Holy See. In a message sent to the new ambassador of Greece to the Holy See, Stavros Lykidis, the Pope has once again asked the Greek government to legally recognise the Catholic Church. “It would be appropriate says the Pope in his message for the Catholic Church to be given the legal status it lacks: it would be a sign of the full recognition of its rights, as granted in the rest of the EU”. The Catholic Church is currently recognized as a “de facto” juridical personality, but no law regulates its relations with the State, in a country in which the Orthodox confession is followed by 98% of the population. This situation according to members of the Catholic Church has repercusssions on the life of the Church, posing obstacles, for example, to the construction of new parishes or monasteries and difficulties in the administration of ecclesiastical properties.
