The state paid €8.86 million towards the salaries of parish clergy last year, with the annual cost of the scheme projected to approach €10 million by 2029.

According to figures from the accountant general’s office released on Tuesday, total state assistance reached €8,857,408 in 2025, up from €8.3 million in 2024 and €7.6 million in 2023.

The approved budget provides for €9.1 million this year, rising to €9.3 million in 2027 and €9.5 million in 2028.

The payments cover part of the salaries of eligible parish clergy of the Church of Cyprus and several other religious communities.

The largest share in 2025, €8.57 million, went to the synods’ central ecclesiastical fund.

A further €120,920 was paid to the Maronite archdiocese, €110,843 to the Latin church, €40,306 to the Armenian Church and €20,153 to Saint Chrysostom’s Monastery, now operating out of Nicosia.

The current arrangement provides for 850 eligible priests, with the state contribution set at €681 per priest per month.

The number of beneficiaries is due to increase by 0.5 per cent annually from this year, while the contribution is adjusted in line with general increases granted to state employees.

The payments do not go directly to individual priests, as the accountant general transfers the funds to the payroll body of the central ecclesiastical fund, and the Church remains responsible for paying its own clergy.

The system dates back to an agreement reached in 1971, when Archbishop Makarios was ruling both as ethnarch and President.

Under the arrangement, the state agreed to assume part of the cost of paying rural parish clergy in return for the transfer of 15,564 acres of church land.

A bill intended to give effect to the agreement was submitted to parliament in 1973 but later withdrawn.

Despite this, the state continued paying part of rural clergy salaries, while the agreed transfer of church land was not completed for decades.

The land was eventually transferred to the state some 48 years later in 2019, when the House also approved legislation revising the state assistance system.

Around 73 per cent of the land the church had bequeathed to the state now lies in the north.

The 2019 bill formalised the number of priests eligible for assistance, setting the figure at 760 until the end of 2020, 800 between 2021 and 2023 and 850 from 2024 onwards.