The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Greece on Thursday repeated its refusal to sanction the practice of cremation, in an announcement issued on Thursday.

“The Holy Synod refuses [to accept] that it is dignified for the deceased to be burned in a furnace,” it said after a meeting chaired by Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos.

“The Church considers the human body a temple for the Holy Spirit” and therefore it declines to treat the dead body “as a ‘solid waste’ in the manner of supporters of cremation.”

Moreover,  the Holy Synod stated that it “was hard to discern any great difference between modern ‘cremation’ of the dead and the process of recycling waste.”

The announcement was issued after the Holy Synod considered the measures of a draft bill due to be passed in Parliament, according to which each person will be able to choose the “type of funeral service” he or she wants to have and makes their choice binding for all bodies or services “overseeing the burial of the dead” provided that it is compatible with rules of public order, hygiene and morality.

Holy Synod claims that the law violates the religious freedom of the Orthodox Church, “whose priests cannot be by law obliged to perform the funeral rites for someone that has asked for a religious funeral but, in the same or other statement, has opted to cremate his or her body.”