The leader of Greece's powerful Orthodox Church announced Friday he will call a rare emergency meeting of its governing council to deal with sex and corruption scandals involving senior Orthodox clerics.
Archbishop Christodoulos said he would convene the 102-member Holy Synod that runs the church shortly after the conservative government rejected demands to consider separating church and state because of the scandals.
He did not provide a date for the gathering, but the meeting was expected to take place this month. The entire Holy Synod usually convenes just once a year in October.
"The demand for a cleanup in the church, a cleanup by us, is urgent and commanding," Christodoulos told reporters. "I will be the guarantor of this catharsis."
Christodoulos spent most of the day meeting with senior bishops to discuss ways of dealing with a crisis that has badly shaken public confidence in his leadership.
"I am talking with senior members of the church to reach the consensus needed to take the decisions that are necessary," he said.
Opposition politicians, conservative party members and even some clerics are increasing pressure on the government for a formal separation of church and state.
"The government does not intend to start a dialogue to change the status in the relationship between church and state," Marietta Giannakou, the education and religious affairs minister, told parliament.
The scandals include illegal wiretaps allegedly containing sexual conversations between senior clerics and their boyfriends. They have also spurred allegations that priests have been involved in trial-fixing, embezzlement and influence-peddling.
A poll published Friday in Athens newspapers showed Christodoulos' popularity has plummeted from 68 percent in May 2004 to 43 percent when the scandal broke in early February. The nationwide telephone poll by the VPRC company of 941 Greek adults did not include a margin of error.
Freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed in Greece, but Orthodox Christianity is the official religion and priests are on the government payroll. More than 97 percent of Greece's 11 million people are baptized Orthodox.
A proposal to amend the constitution in 2001 to remove Orthodoxy as the official religion never made it to parliament.
"Even if we have a separation of church and state, that does not mean we would not have incidents of corruption," Giannakou said.
Earlier this week, Premier Costas Caramanlis called on the church to take steps to fight corruption. His conservative party received strong church backing when it defeated the Socialists in March 2004 elections.
"We are waiting to see if the bold steps needed to be taken will be taken," government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros said.