Catholic theology
Catholic belief holds that the church exists both on earth and in heaven simultaneously, and thus the Virgin Mary and the saints are alive and part of the living church. Prayers and devotions to Mary and the saints are common practices in Catholic life. These devotions are not worship, since only God is worshiped. The church teaches that the saints "do not cease to intercede with the Father for us. ... So by their fraternal concern is our weakness greatly helped."
Catholic Church in Greece
The Catholic Church in Greece is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Indigenous Roman Catholic Greeks number about 50,000-70.000 and are a religious and not an ethnic minority. Most of them are a reminiscence of Venetian and Genoese rule in many Greek islands (in both the Aegean and Ionian seas) from the early 13th until the late 18th century, or descendants of the thousands of Bavarians that came to Greece in the 1830s as soldiers and civil administrators, accompanying King Otto. One very old but still common term to refer to them is "Φράγκοι", or "Franks", dating to the times of the Byzantine Empire, when medieval Greeks would use that term to describe all Catholics.