ΤΗΕSSALONIKI — While the Church of Greece has gone along with COVID-19 health measures that have been relaxed during an already lenient lockdown, services open during Easter, a priest in northern Greece said he won't obey the restrictions.

Without naming him, Kathimerini said the priest was in Nea Silata in Halkidiki sand said he wants to refuse entry to church to people wearing masks or who are vaccinated, Greece still having a continent of anti-vaxxers who think the serum is designed to alter their DNA or control their minds.

In a Good Friday sermon, the priest said he wanted to “strangle” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, at odds with Christian and Orthodox beliefs about killing anyone.

He was already known as an outspoken opponent of safety measures aimed at slowing the spread of the Coronavirus and blasted the leadership of the Greek Church which he said is “in a slumber” in bowing to the conditions.

The measures, he stressed, are nothing short of “fascism,” the paper reported. Greece has a handful of renegade priests who reject their church's going along with government measures. 

The government has been speeding a vaccination program that is showing signs of working although far behind schedule and more people are lining up to get their shots after many were initially dubious about the safety and efficacy.