Father Seraphim, priest of Kryoneri Lake Plastira for almost half a century, “confesses” his complaint: “I have to marry and baptism for 25 years …”
Greece … deserted and declined. Villages that were once full of life are abandoned daily to their fate, with the few old men behind … “Keep Thermopylae”, but without hope that better days will come. The lack of professional perspective forces the younger ones to leave, seeking their luck somewhere else, in an urban center, without looking back.
“I have to marry and baptism for 25 years …”. With this disarming phrase, Father Seraphim, priest of Kryoneri Lake Plastira of just 130 souls, gives the mark of the demographic problem plaguing the country, and especially the remote villages of the countryside.
Maria Voussoula, looking for the causes of the existential threat that has been silently evolving at national and European level in recent decades, traveled with Prime Time’s camera in areas of the country that emit danger.
Among them, Evritania and Karditsa – two regional units with economic performance significantly below national and community, which are not different from the tendency of continuous population shrinkage.
In the café of Kryoneri, Father Seraphim, a senior of the Church of the Virgin Mary for nearly half a century and a native of the village, remembers the times when he was nostalgia, 10 marriages and 15 baptisms a year.
“We were about 600 people and now we don’t even get the 130. How can I not complain? I see my village worn, people leave. Within a month we had six funerals, ”he continues and attributes the phenomenon of desolation to the lack of professional opportunities for young people.
“There are no prospects. What to do here, “he wonders, hurrying to clarify that in the past agricultural production was enough to nourish the families of five -fold permanent residents.
As for the future, his response leaves no room for optimism – despite the huge tourist development of the wider area of Lake Plastira. “It doesn’t turn the village as it used to be,” he estimates, with his 82 -year -old fellow villager and friend Vasilis Nakis adding: “We were now 10 old people here. All day long, if you go out to the cafe, you will see me, the priest, Thomas and no one more. This is the life we make now … “.
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Source: Skai
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