POPULATION 10,645,343
EASTERN ORTHODOX 97 percent
MUSLIM 1.3 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC 0.6 percent
PROTESTANT 0.2 percent
JEWISH 0.05 percent
OTHER 0.85 percent

Country Overview

Introduction

Greece (formally known in English as the Hellenic Republic) is located in the southern Balkan Peninsula. A mountainous country, it is bordered to the east by the Aegean Sea, to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the west by the Ionian Sea. To the north it shares land borders with Albania, Macedonia (FYROM), Bulgaria, and Turkey. Its territories include more than 2,000 islands.

Greece is known as the cradle of ancient Hellenic civilization, and yet, since the Byzantine period, Orthodox Christianity has been the dominant religion. Following the emergence of Greece from centuries of Ottoman control and the foundation (1828), international recognition (London Protocol of 1830), and territorial expansion of the Greek state, the Orthodox Church became closely associated with the state, and it has often fallen victim to Greece's turbulent...