GREECE AND CREMATION
A Greek drama: 'Cremation isn't allowed'
by Frank Bruni NYT Friday, June 27, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/100962.html
ATHENS - In
another country, the promise that Antony Alakiotis made to an elderly friend
would be easy to keep. But a Greek's last rights are limited, and what that
friend has requested for his afterlife defies convention and is not authorized
by law.
He wants his body burned, and he wants Alakiotis to see to it. In Greece, alone
among the 15 nations in the European Union, cremation does not exist.
Alakiotis is waging a vigorous campaign to change that, and not simply for his
77-year-old friend. "It's inconceivable to me that cremation isn't allowed
here," he said in an interview here earlier this week. Cremation amounts
to "the last wish" of many people, he said, expressing outrage that
such a wish would not "be respected in a country that prides itself on
being the birthplace of democracy."
For more than five years, Alakiotis has channeled his ire into the Committee
for the Foundation of a Cremation Center in Greece. Over recent months, he and
others with the group have intensified their efforts, riddling lawmakers with
letters and calls and getting international cremation advocates to take more
interest in Greece's situation.
It is a peculiar one, reflecting the tenacious sway of the Greek Orthodox
Church, and it is made stranger by severe overcrowding in cemeteries and a
ruthlessly rapid turnover of graves.
Death is different here: A Greek's final resting place is usually not the first
one. Most bodies are exhumed after three years in a rented plot so that the
next corpses can be buried, often within 24 hours. The exhumations must be
monitored by friends or relatives, who may see something messier than a
skeleton.
"Because the ground here has been used so much, sometimes the body hasn't
decomposed enough," said Dimitra Kollia, an administrator at the Athens
First Cemetery, the largest of three public cemeteries in the city.
"That's traumatic."
In those cases, Kollia said, the remains get interred anew, in shallower graves
that are more exposed to the elements. The goal is to end up with a set of
bones that can be tucked into a sort of overgrown shoebox and stacked on the
library-like shelves of an ossuary.
That dark journey is why some Greeks say that cremation must - and will - be
explicitly approved by new legislation. Current law leaves the legal status of
the practice ambiguous, discouraging the establishment of any crematoriums.
"It's important to do it yesterday, for the very simple reason that we
will gain cemetery space," said the Athens mayor, Dora Bakoyanni, who has
supported such legislation for years.
Cremation advocates also note that the Olympic Games, to be held in Athens next
year, will put Greece in a media spotlight, inviting scrutiny of the country
while giving it a chance to glow.
One of the questions they ask lawmakers is whether a ban on cremation suits the
dynamic image that the Greek government, which surprised skeptics by meeting
the economic criteria for entry into the euro zone, has been trying to project.
But Greece, more than the other European nations that it considers its peers,
teeters awkwardly between tradition and modernity, struggling for balance as it
absorbs a recent influx of immigrants and adjusts to a diversifying population.
The debate over cremation illustrates that.
Cremation advocates point out that Greece's roughly 11 million people include
at least hundreds of thousands whose religions, like Roman Catholicism and
Buddhism, sanction the practice. But the Greek Orthodox Church does not, and
even today, about nine of every 10 Greek citizens are baptized in that faith.
"Christ himself was buried, not burned," said Bishop Theoklitos
Koumarianos, a church spokesman, adding: "Our church honors the body. It
doesn't throw it in a crematorium."
While church leaders say they do not object to cremation for Greeks who are not
Orthodox Christians, they have also expressed fears that the existence of
crematoriums in Greece could give church members ideas.
And while church leaders say they do not oppose a new law, cremation advocates
say that those leaders have campaigned behind the scenes against such
legislation.
Prime Minister Costas Simitis already inflamed church leaders three years ago
by ordering religious affiliation removed from the national identity cards that
Greeks carry. His government seems loath to do battle with them again.
"The issue is a delicate one," said Vassiliki Koutsouba, the chief
press officer for the Ministry of the Interior, which has jurisdiction over the
issue. "The church, you see, is an important factor."
At present, people who die in Greece can be cremated only in other countries, to
which their bodies must be transported at a cost of thousands of dollars.
Cremation advocates say that getting the ashes back to Greece can be tricky
because remains are not supposed to be handled outside the country's mortuaries
and cemeteries.
"I'd just pop them in my suitcase," said Susann Helms, the president
of the pro-cremation foundation, envisioning what she would do if her husband
died before she did. "I'm not trying to sound unsentimental."
Helms, 60, is Australian, while her husband, George Vlassis, 64, is Greek. They
live - and could die - here. But they are prepared for post-mortem traveling,
she said, if that is what it takes to get cremated, which both of them want.
Alakiotis, 48, said that he also wanted to be cremated, but could not accept
that his body - or his friend's - would need to be packed up and shipped away.
"I think it's barbaric," he said, "to have to be a refugee in
death."
The New York Times
A Greek drama: 'Cremation isn't
allowed': http://www.iht.com/articles/100962.html
http://Biserica.org