The Social Justice Center expresses concern with regard to the decision of the Government of Georgia to increase the financing of the Georgian Patriarchate by 35 million GEL. The decision not only clashes with the constitutional principles of secularism and equality, but also represents an attempt to politically instrumentalize the Church in the election runup and delivers a blow to democratic processes in the country.

Pursuant to the 15 March 2024 decree of the Government of Georgia, the prime minister has mandated the Georgian Ministry of Education, Science and Youth to allocate 35 million GEL for financing education institutions established by the Georgian Patriarchate, under the General Education Schools Support facility stipulated by the 2024 law on the state budget of Georgia. The decree includes a list of the Patriarchate’s education institutions with respective bank accounts for individual transfer of allocation. Interestingly, the largest share of the allocation – 22 million out of 35 million GEL has been earmarked for the Foundation for the Development of Education and Cultural Measures, a non-profit under the Patriarchate of Georgia,[1] making the distribution eerily disproportionate.

It should also be noted that on 18 March 2024, additional 7 500 000 million GEL was allocated from the regional projects implementation fund, a facility under the state budget of Georgia, to cover Gelati Monastery’s restoration and reconstruction costs.[2]

To sum up, under the 2024 state budget, the financing of the Patriarchate and its organizations have doubled and exceeded 67 million GEL.

It remains unclear whether or not the Government will make a decision to provide financing to the Patriarchate and its organizations beyond annual 25 million GEL stipulated by the law on the state budget, next year as well.

In general, the analysis of laws on the state budget of Georgia since 2002 suggests that financial allocations of the state to the Patriarchate have been continuous and growing. From 2009 to 2013, allocations ranged from 22 to 27 million GEL, while since 2013 the allocation has been fixed at 25 million GEL.[3] In sum, since 2002, the cumulative allocation from the state budget (excluding municipal budgets, reserve funds etc) has totaled more than 400 million GEL.

Since 2022, in addition to direct allocations from the state budget, the Orthodox Church has come to own great deals of real estates, movable property, one-off financial transfers and other benefits donated or transferred by various state institutions. Local dioceses and individual members of the clergy also receive funds from municipal budgets on a regular basis. [4]

The existing practice of the public financing of the Church has been inherently problematic. Not only is it conflicting with the fundamental constitutional principles of a democratic state, but also contradicts terms and conditions of the constitutional agreement concluded between the state of Georgia and the Georgian Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church in 2002.

Pursuant to Article 11(1) of the Constitutional Agreement, the scope of the state’s financial support is limited to partially compensating against material losses sustained by the Church during the Soviet time. [5] At the same time, it is laid down that issues pertaining to the volume and terms of financing, as well as matters of property or land transfer to the Church shall be resolved by a commission to be formed on the principles of parity. [6] However, the commission has never worked, nor has the state gauge the amount of loss sustained by the Church. For this very reason, the existing practice of financing, against the rationale of the Constitutional Agreement, and instead of serving the purpose of compensating against losses, looks more of direct financial allocations, which is a non-democratic form of financing since the volume and terms of funding are subject to a pure political will and increases the likelihood of the Church being politically instrumentalized.[7]

Generally, it should be noted that a model of the church financing based on compensation against damage and losses is a legitimate and democratic form of church financing. It is built on the tenet of serving justice for various religious organizations sustaining damages and losses at various times in history. According to this model, the financing of religious organizations is commensurable to the extent of loss gauged by objectively measurable indicators. Besides, compensation is reasonably estimated and ultimately exhaustive. As mentioned earlier, while there is a model of compensation existing at least nominally, the existing practice is, in fact, a direct subsidy having no links to factors related to damage and its extent. It is, therefore, also unclear, when the the state’s commitment to reimburse against sustained losses, will be considered fulfilled.

Moreover, the 2024 law on the state budget of Georgia has an entry which directly points out to a confessional importance of the financing of the Patriarchate: ‘allocate funding to more than 70 education-cultural and charity organizations acting under the Patriarchate in various regions of Georgia (including high-mountainous zones) for raising youth based on Christian values.’[8] The legally defined purpose for funding a religious organization is inherently non-secular, untransparent and lays foundation for illegitimate interreference of the state in the work of the religious organization.

In addition to the circumstances mentioned above, over the course of decades, the practice of providing state funding to the Patriarchate has been discriminatory in its nature since it only supported financially a single religious organization. The 2014 decision to extend the funding arrangement to additional four organizations (Armenian and Roman Catholic Churches, Muslim and Jewish communities) has not changed a discriminatory nature of funding policy since many other religious organizations remain left behind.

Importantly, the Patriarchate bears no responsibility to ensure transparency over the spending of public money. Nor is the spending subject to the state inspection which doubles the risk of these financial resources being misused or spent inappropriately.

The appraisal above is relevant for the 15 March 2024 decree as well. It should be noted that the allocation of financial resources in the amount of 35 million GEL to education institutions under the Georgian Patriarchate has been endorsed by a decree of the government rather than through bringing changes and amendments to the law on the state budget by the country’s parliament. This move constitutes a severe interference into the right of religious freedom and equality, and therefore, qualifies as inadequate legal form containing high risks of arbitrariness.

In regard to the 2024 decree, it is also unclear why the state should provide funding to private education institutions under the Patriarchate, over which the state can exercise rather weak, if any supervision and which, in large part, pursue confessional education.

It should also be highlighted that the decision to increase funding to the Patriarchate was made by the government without any deliberation whatsoever as to which direction of the country’s general education system will be affected by this reallocation and how it will impact fundamental educational, infrastructural, and social challenges faced by Georgia’s education system. Just few examples provided below will suffice to demonstrate the acuteness of these challenges:  1). 59% of schools in the country are in dire need of complete or partial rehabilitation. There is also need for constructing new schools or overhauling existing ones (the complete rehabilitation/construction of school infrastructure was scheduled to be finalized first by the end of the 2023. The objective was then held over to the end of 2026 and ultimately to the end of 2027).[9] 2). 77% of surveyed pupils said they are sometimes (42%) or always (35%) hungry while at school. Malnutrition has a direct bearing on low literacy ranking. Georgian schools do not provide free or subsidized meals to pupils to this day.

Going beyond legal and social arguments, we believe that a drastic increase in the financing of the Patriarchate in the election runup serves a political purpose and aims to mobilize voters’ support through securing loyalty on part of the Church and leveraging religious sentiments. Increasing the financial allocations to the Church in the pre-election period and in the face of political crises has been a common practice in recent years (including under the tenure of the previous government) and indicative of a long-running non-democratic trend of the governments leveraging the Church for political purposes which contradicts the idea of democratic policymaking.

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