President Karolos Papoulias (r) is cordially received at the entrance to the Irodou Attikou Street Presidential Palace on Saturday by Greece’s outgoing head of state, Costis Stephanopoulos. Papoulias, a 76-year-old former Socialist foreign minister, was sworn in for a five-year term earlier in the day.

As former president Costis Stephanopoulos enjoyed his first day out of office with a 16-kilometer bike ride at his holiday home on Sunday, his successor, Karolos Papoulias, held his first meetings in the Presidential Palace in Athens.

Papoulias, 76, who was sworn in on Saturday as Greece’s sixth president since the fall of the military junta in 1974, met with close associates at his new office ahead of his first official duties, which are set to begin toward the end of this week. Meanwhile, Stephanopoulos, 79, retired to his holiday home in Rio, near his native Patras.

On Saturday, Stephanopoulos said he was sure that the former PASOK foreign minister had the necessary qualities to make a good president. However, he also warned Papoulias that with the crisis in the judiciary and Church in mind, some changes were needed to the way checks were made and penalties enforced.

For his part, the new president said that Stephanopoulos’s would prove a tough act to follow, adding that he realized he was taking over during a “period of crisis in values and institutions” which was damaging the country’s image both domestically and internationally.

Political controversy threatened to overshadow the swearing-in ceremony as MPs from the Synaspismos Left Coalition staged a walkout in protest over the fact that Papoulias was taking his oath before Archbishop Christodoulos, the head of the Church of Greece — as is traditional. Theodoros Koliopanos, a PASOK deputy, refused to attend the ceremony in protest at the Church’s role. The remaining Socialist MPs demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the recent Church scandals by refusing to stand when the archbishop entered the debating chamber with members of the Holy Synod.