A Greek Orthodox Giant of Unity

Aristokles Spyrou was born in 1886, in Greece. After completing his seminary education he was ordained a deacon in 1910 and took the name Athenagoras.

He was still a deacon when he was appointed the Greek Orthodox bishop of Corfu in 1922. Later, in 1930, he was appointed archbishop of North and South America in order to restore harmony to the American diocese at a time of dissension.

In 1948 he was elected Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the first among equals in the Orthodox Church. His patriarchate would be marked by tireless and limitless efforts for unity of Christian churches. Here are some highlights of his ecumenical efforts.

In 1952, Athenagoras issued an encyclical that officially approved the Orthodox participation in the Ecumenical Movement and membership in the World Council of Churches.

Later, in 1960, he convoked the Pan-Orthodox Conference of Rhodes through which efforts of reconciliation with other Eastern Churches began.

In his address to the Patriarch Maximus, of the Greek Melkites, Athenagoras declared: “We are living in a new era. Let us lay aside the past and let us leave the theological issues which divide us to the pundits and the experts; as for us…let us aim always to be united through the love of Christ.”

The most momentous ecumenical event is the 1964 encounter of Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem. Before his departure for Jerusalem he said: “I have always dreamed of meeting the pope. May the day of our meeting be a great day for Christianity and for the whole of humanity.” He added: “I am going to meet the pope and embrace him in a fraternal manner. We will leave discussions to the theologians.” And on the flight to the Holy Land he exulted: “What joy! What delight! I am living in a dream, a dream which fills my heart with great hopes.”

Later he expressed his satisfaction to Italian news agency: “I was especially impressed by the fact that the pontiff has completely forgotten the ugly past and made it possible for us to inaugurate a new era.” He then added: “My conscience is at peace before God. Orthodoxy means freedom, and it is the free who make progress.”

On December 7, 1965—the day before the Second Vatican Council closed—Athenagoras and Paul VI mutually lifted the anathemas pronounced in 1054, when the Catholic and Orthodox Churches split.

In their Joint Declaration they affirmed that they were answering God’s call in overcoming division and start again to journey together in unity. They regretted and thus removed “both from memory and from the midst of the Church the sentences [of the anathemas]… and they commit these… to oblivion….”

Since then, the pope of Rome has been included among those commemorated by the patriarch of Constantinople in the Divine Liturgy.

During his 1965 visit to Rome, Athenagoras observed that the Catholics and the Orthodox belonged not to two different Churches but to two branches of the same Church, with more things that unite than separate them.

Athenagoras extended the gesture of reconciliation also to Anglicans and Protestants. In the Anglican cathedral in London he said Christians were tired of the long centuries of quarrels that have brought nothing but spiritual coldness.

He maintained the same message of reconciliation to the Orthodox, too. He challenged the faculty of theology in Belgrade that this was no longer the time for theological controversy and polemic but for reconciliation by the language that expresses the truth with love. And in his Christmas message of 1967 he called upon all Christians to lower banners of hatred and raise the Cross of love and sacrifice.

Who cannot but marvel at such an ecumenist? Yet to some of his Orthodox brethren, Athenagoras was no more than a betrayer of true faith. This is owed to the way the Orthodox Church considered itself as the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, from which all others split. Thus, mixing with non-Orthodox was tainting the true faith—an attitude that sounds quite familiar to many Catholics.

That is why while the world over applauded the encounters of Athenagoras and Paul VI, it was quite another story among some Orthodox. Some Orthodox monasteries would no longer cite Patriarch Athenagoras during Divine Liturgy as sign of communion.

Metropolitan Philaret, then president of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, protested to the patriarch against the lifting of the anathemas and his praying with the pope, a “heretic”. A good Orthodox, the reasoning went, should have nothing to do with heretics and schismatics like Catholics, Armenians, Anglicans and Protestants. Athenagoras’ ecumenism was thus seen as treason.

Another member of the Orthodox hierarchy, US Archbishop Gregoire, registered his protest in these words: “The reader will no doubt be filled [with] horror by the time that he finishes merely reading the pure apostate evil that spewed forth from the lips of this man, or rather, this wolf in sheep’s clothing…”

While others saw heretics everywhere, Athenagoras remarked: “I don’t see them anywhere! I see only truths, partial truths, reduced truths, truths that are sometimes out of place…”

His unrelenting efforts for unity under such hostile conditions that confirm his profound ecumenical convictions. Athenagiras, who died on July 7, 1972 at the age of 86 in Istanbul, certainly is a great “Saint of Christian Unity”.