c. 1996 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In an historic move Tuesday (July 30) that signals a new era for Orthodox Christians in the West, leaders of the Orthodox Church reached into the ranks of American-born prelates and elected an Ohio native, Metropolitan Spyridon of Italy, to head the newly created Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

The 51-year-old Spyridon succeeds Archbishop Iakovos, who had ruled the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America for 37 years. Iakovos’ reluctant resignation, submitted on orders from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, took effect Monday (July 29) on his 85th birthday.

Almost simultaneously in Istanbul, a 12-member Holy Synod, headed by Bartholomew, the pre-eminent leader of the Orthodox Church, chose Spyridon as Archbishop of America.

The new prelate, Bartholomew said in a statement, has the responsibility”to lead into the 21st century a church in transition from an ethnic church to a church encompassing all Americans.” A measure of just how much Spyridon differs from his Greek-born predecessor, Iakovos, is that the newly elected archbishop has the reputation in ecumenical circles of being a bit of a computer nerd. Among Spyridon’s first official actions after being named Metropolitan of Italy was to establish a home page for his jurisdiction on the World Wide Web.

The choice of Spyridon to head the 1.9 million-member Greek Orthodox Church in America is the first act of a massive restructuring of Greek Orthodox Christians in the West, breaking up a jurisdiction that stretched from Alaska to the tip of South America.

In addition to the American archdiocese, to be based in New York City, the Ecumenical Patriarchate also has established three new jurisdictions _ in Toronto, for Canada; Buenos Aires, for South America; and Mexico City, for Mexico, Central America and Puerto Rico. A metropolitan _ an office ranked between bishop and archbishop _ will be designated at a later date for each jurisdiction, according to a statement issued by church officials in Istanbul.

But the changes instituted Tuesday in Istanbul, stilled called by the ancient name of Constantinople by the 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, involve far more than naming new leaders and redrawing geographical boundaries.

The election of Spyridon heralds a new era for Orthodox Christianity, long isolated from the rest of the religious and political world by ethnic rivalries, internal power struggles and nationalistic concerns.

Bartholomew, 56, who came to power in 1991, is often described as the”John XXIII of Orthodoxy”for his attempts to free the church from the constraints of the past. Under his guidance, Orthodox Christianity is seeking to transcend its ethnic boundaries and articulate its theology with new relevance to the contemporary world. And Bartholomew, according to his advisers, believes that the American Orthodox Church has a key role to play.”We have had serious problems in the past, but now the Orthodox Church is solving them,”said one church official, speaking on condition of anonymity.”Our theology is pure. Now, if we can apply it in the right way, not only will this new age deal with an old truth, it will see some very exciting times. In America, you will see a more proactive church.” Born Sept. 24, 1944, in Warren, Ohio, George Papageorgiou grew up rooted in the United States and the Greek Island of Rhodes, where his family returned when he was a child. His father, the late Dr. Constantine Papageorgiou, was a physician, and the family divided their lives between Rhodes and the primarily Greek community of Tarpon Springs, Fla., where he attended high school. His mother, Clara, now lives in Rhodes.”He is an American who knows the American idiom, but he has been outside that context for many years and is therefore unencumbered by the particularities of the American scene,”said the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, former president of the National Council of Churches and a priest of the independent Orthodox Church in America, a sister denomination to the Greek Orthodox, whose 2 million members are primarily of Russian descent.”He comes into a situation of transition,”Kishkovsky said.”It is a bittersweet time, the passing of an era but also a time of moving forward. For many in Greek Orthodoxy, moving forward means moving forward coherently with other Orthodox churches.” As a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church, Papageorgiou served in a variety of posts before being named the Metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Italy in 1991. Following Orthodox tradition, for his new role he chose the name Spyridon, in honor of the 4th-century Cypriot saint who was revered for his skills as a shepherd.

As metropolitan in Italy, Spyridon, who is fluent in five languages, frequently represented the interests of the Orthodox Church at the Vatican. He is best known in the United States for what some have described as an”electrifying”address in 1994 to the annual Greek Orthodox Clergy and Laity Congress in Chicago.

Speaking for Bartholomew, Spyridon set out an agenda for a world renewal of Orthodoxy, based in part on the ability of Orthodox Christians in the West to overcome the ethnic divisions that have plagued their church for hundreds of years.”But what we see all too often _ not only among Orthodox but throughout the world _ is a destructive politics of identity,”he said. Bartholomew, he added,”wants to cut this Gordian knot of nationalism.”With its collection of ethnic, racial and religious groups, America … is a microcosm of the rest of the world,”Spyridon said.”We hope that you, the Greek Orthodox of the Americas, will continue to show the way to Orthodox unity.” Spyridon’s speech helped set the stage for a landmark meeting Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 1994, in Ligonier, Pa. At that meeting, bishops of the 10 Orthodox denominations in the United States declared that they were one church and were ready to move toward”administrative ecclesial unity in North America.” The document, signed by 26 of the 28 bishops attending the meeting, was viewed as a kind of declaration of independence from ethnic mother churches in such places as Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, the Ukraine and Russia.

But the call sent shockwaves through the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. Bartholomew reportly read the meeting as a bid led by Iakovos, who had ruled the archdiocese with an imperial hand, to establish an independent church.

Bartholomew ordered the plan scrapped, embittering many American Orthodox leaders. Spyridon faces what Kishkovsky called”the daunting task”of overcoming that bitterness.”The Orthodox community in America has been through some rough weather since November 1994,”Kishkovsky said.”What is meant by Orthodox unity _ that is perhaps the key issue that will be before him,”Kishkovsky said of Spyridon.

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The archbishop-elect, who will be installed in office Sept. 21 at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in New York City, comes well-equipped to face that task.

He studied at the Theological School of Halki, the crown jewel of Orthodox theological training, and did postgraduate work at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, specializing in the history of Protestant churches. He also studied Byzantine literature at Bochum University in Germany.

Between 1966 and 1967, he served as secretary to the Permanent Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches in Geneva, and later as Secretary of the Orthodox Center at Chambesy, Switzerland.

In 1976 he became pastor at St. Andrew’s Greek Orthodox church in Rome, where he served until 1985, which launched his continuing role as an emissary to the Vatican. In 1984, he was appointed executive secretary of the Inter-Orthodox Commission for the theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches.

MJP END RNS