Metropolitan Bishop of Chisinau and Entire Moldova Vladimir is supporting the idea of holding a referendum to introduce courses of religion in public schools. He has told a meeting with reporters on Wednesday the referendum is needed because the opinion of the people is not clear in this issue, Info-Prim Neo reports. The Metropolitan Bishop has blessed the idea of the former defense minister Valeriu Pasat, who is now a member-correspondent of the Moldovan Academy of Sciences, to ask what people think about the introduction of Orthodox basics in schools. “We have elections almost every year and yet no one has ever tried to ask the people's will on religion in schools. There is no exact figure to tell how many Orthodox Christians we have in Moldova, nor we know the percentage of followers of other denominations”, said Vladimir. He went on to add that his previous attempts to convince the leadership of the country of the necessity of such a move were fruitless. Two weeks ago Valeriu Pasat told a news conference: “Starting the 90s, there were attempts to teach the basics of Orthodoxy in the Moldovan schools, but those initiatives faced two big issues: bureaucracy and the failure to understand what the introduction of Orthodoxy in school really meant”. Bishop Anton Cosa, the head of the Catholic Church in Moldova, says he doesn't see a problem with this initiative. “It wouldn't be morally right to oblige a Catholic pupil to make the sign of the Cross with three fingers or say Orthodox prayers. But a Catholic pupil can attend such classes and learn how the Orthodox believers do it”. Earlier, Metropolitan Bishop Vladimir together with Petru, the head of the second major Orthodox denomination – the Church of Bessarabia, met with Prime Minister Vlad Filat to discuss the introduction of religion in schools. Filat said a Government decision or even a law would be adopted to decide the issue. Whereas Vladimir prefers the idea of a referendum, Petru would only ask the clergy to decide.