NEWS

Greeks are EU’s ‘most religious’

Greeks are the most religious people in Europe and the eighth most devout in the world, according to the results of a worldwide survey conducted across 68 countries over the summer and made public yesterday. An overwhelming 86 percent of Greeks claim to be religious, according to the poll, which was conducted upon a sample of 53,749 respondents by TNS ICAP in association with Gallup International Association. The most devout people in the world are Ghanaians, 91 percent of whom claimed to be religious. The least religious were in Hong Kong and Japan, where only 14 percent and 17 percent respectively claimed to be religious. The poll defined «religious» as believing in a faith rather than attending church regularly. «Religion may not play a decisive role in daily life but religious faith is, to a large extent, a matter of tradition,» Panayiotis Pachis, a professor of theology at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University, told Kathimerini yesterday. For example, the overwhelming majority of Greeks attend church during Orthodox Easter, he said.

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