c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ In an unprecedented action, the head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America resigned Thursday (Aug. 19) following more than two years of bitter controversy sparked by what critics called his stubbornly autocratic style unsuited to a church that had moved beyond its immigrant roots.

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based spiritual head of the American church, immediately appointed Metropolitan Demetrios Trakatellis of Greece to replace Archbishop Spyridon. Demetrios is well-known to archdiocese leaders.

The Ohio-born Spyridon’s reign over the 1.5-million member church lasted just three years.

It was Bartholomew who had appointed Spyridon, just as it was Bartholomew’s support for Spyridon that until now had allowed him to hang on to his office, despite the growing chorus of American Greek Orthodox leaders and lay members clamoring for his removal.

Demetrios, in turn, asked Bishop George, head of the Diocese of New Jersey, to act as archiepiscopal vicar, or temporary administrator of the archdiocese. The Rev. Alexander Leondis, George’s top aide, said the 71-year-old Demetrios was expected to arrive in the United States in about three weeks.

Spyridon, 54, has been temporarily reassigned to Turkey.

Demetrios had long been rumored as Spyridon’s likely replacement and has wide support among those dissidents within the American church who worked to force Spyridon from his post.

Bartholomew’s office said Demetrios, who had been working with the church in Athens, would arrive in Istanbul on Friday to preside over an official announcement of his appointment. Because Demetrios was formally attached to the independent Church of Greece, leaders of that church had to approve his selection prior to Bartholomew’s announcement.

A respected scholar well-known among U.S. priests and metropolitans, Demetrios spent 1983-93 teaching at the church’s Hellenic College-Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, Mass.

He also taught at Harvard University, where he earned a doctorate degree in New Testament studies. Demetrios was also in the running to become archbishop in 1996, but was passed over by Bartholomew in favor of Spyridon.

Efforts to reach Demetrios at his home in Athens, which he shares with his mother, were unsuccessful Thursday.

Spyridon’s resignation came in a letter released early Thursday after months of speculation in the Greek-American and mainstream media over when Bartholomew would withdraw his backing and force Spyridon to step down. His departure was announced by an aide to about 30 archdiocesan staff members hastily assembled Thursday morning in a chapel at archdiocese headquarters in New York shortly after 9:30.

“I have submitted this resignation, effective August 30th, for reasons totally independent of and unrelated to my personal intentions,” Spyridon said in his letter, which hinted at a sense of bitterness.

Addressing his critics _ who included the five ranking metropolitans of the archdiocese, as well as more than 100 priests and those lay members who had publicly urged his removal _ Spyridon said:

“For those few of every grade who during the past three years have opposed this vital mission of the church and have spared little ordnance in an attack of words that has done far more damage to our Greek Orthodox family than it has to those entrusted with its leadership, I extend my heartfelt archpastoral forgiveness.

“It is my abiding hope that you will be granted to envision a future in which words will cease to be weapons and become icons of the living word of God, heralds of the gospel of peace.”

The Rev. Mark Arey, Spyridon’s chief spokesman, said the ousted church leader had no comment beyond his letter.

“This is great news,” said Dean Popps, a Virginia businessman and spokesman for Greek Orthodox American Leaders (GOAL), the dissident group that led the effort to pressure Spyridon into resigning. “The big story is that the lay peoples’ voice was heard.”

However, John Catsimatidis, a Spyridon loyalist and vice chairman of the Archdiocesan Council, said, “It’s a sad day for the church. I think it’s very sad that as Christians certain people would rather see the church burn down than see compromises. I never believed that was the Christian way … Naturally, we hope the new archbishop will have more support from the overall community.”

Spyridon’s departure marked the first time in the 77-year organized history of the U.S. Greek Orthodox church that its reigning prelate has been pressured into resigning by internal criticism of his job performance. However, a predecessor, Archbishop Alexander, was reassigned in 1930 as a result of his partisan involvement in Greece’s political strife.

Spyridon’s removal is all the more remarkable because of the tradition of strict hierarchical authority that has been a hallmark of Eastern Orthodox churches. His resignation underscores the influence American culture has had on a formerly immigrant church that once tended to accept without public complaint the dictates of its leaders.

“This is a huge stroke for the laity,” said Popps. “It shows the power of the laity. It’s no turning back from here.”

But the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, an official with the Orthodox Church in America, cautioned against giving too much credit to GOAL’s lay revolt. The OCA, which has its origins in Russian Orthodoxy, is, after the Greek church, the second largest of the various ethnically derived American Orthodox denominations with almost 1 million members.

Kishkovsky, editor of “The Orthodox Church,” his denomination’s monthly newspaper, said the opposition of the senior American metropolitans was at least as important.

“There was grassroots criticism, but there was also clergy criticism and the criticism offered by the metropolitans. Ultimately, it was this whole spectrum, that forced (the ecumenical patriarch) to act and Spyridon to submit his resignation,” he said.

As head of the largest, wealthiest and most visible of the various American Orthodox Christian bodies, Spyridon’s troubles drew wide attention. Opposition to his rule first surfaced following a 1997 incident at Hellenic College-Holy Cross school.

In what his critics said was an attempt to cover up a sex scandal involving a student and a visiting cleric, Spyridon ousted the school’s president, its librarian and two professors. His actions were perceived as authoritarian and capricious, and angry church activists organized to engineer his removal from office.

Following a complaint to them, two accreditating agencies investigated the archdiocese’s administering of the school, an action that threatened its accreditation. The church has since promised to reform its handling of the school, and the threats have been lifted for now.

However, the incident left a lasting division within the church. And it gave rise to charges Spyridon routinely ignored the church’s constitutionally guaranteed powers granted to the metropolitans, priests and lay leaders in favor of one-man rule.

There were also allegations of inappropriate financial dealings by the archbishop in relation to real estate deals and heavy-handed attempts by him to silence critics.

One such critic was the Rev. Robert G. Stephanopoulos, the popular dean of New York’s Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Stephanopoulos had most of his authority lifted by Spyridon after he publicly opposed Spyridon’s leadership. Stephanopoulos is the father of former White House aide George Stephanopoulos.

Various dissidents filed lawsuits against the archdiocese, which fired back by asking a court to prevent GOAL from using the church’s official mailing list. A judge ruled against the church, and the infighting led to dozens of stories in the news media that cast the church in a bad light.

Despite the escalating controversy, Bartholomew publicly stuck with Spyridon and ignored calls for his removal, even as a dozen or so parishes around the nation voted to withhold their annual donations from the archdiocese’s national coffers until the archbishop was replaced.

Last January, the five metropolitans met with Bartholomew in Istanbul, only to be told to return to the United States and find a way to work with Spyridon.

However, in recent weeks Greek and Greek-American newspapers reported Bartholomew had changed his mind. Spyridon was reportedly finished, and all that remained was for the ecumenical patriarch to find a face-saving way to remove him and install a replacement.

The final straw sealing Spyridon’s fate, said the papers, was pressure from the Greek government for his removal. Athens became “intensely concerned” that the growing split within the church over Spyridon’s leadership compromised its ability to lobby on behalf of Greece’s interests in Washington, said Stephen P. Angelides, executive editor of GOAL’s “Voithia” Web site.

Spyridon was born George C.P. George in Warren, Ohio. His father, a Greek immigrant, moved the family back to Greece when his son was 9. At 15, Spyridon returned to the United States, graduating from high school in Tarpon Springs, Fla.

He then returned to Europe to become a Greek Orthodox priest. He served as the ecumenical patriarch’s representative to the World Council of Churches in Geneva, as the chief Orthodox representative involved in official dialogue with the Vatican, and the metropolitan of Italy before returning to the United States as archbishop.

He came to the post amid optimism that, as its first American-born leader, Spyridon might be particularly in tune with the unique needs of church members reared on American-style independence and participatory democracy.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM – STORY MAY END HERE)

Under his immediate predecessor, Archbishop Iakovos _ who eventually also publicly denounced Spyridon’s leadership _ a movement for greater ecclesiastical autonomy from the ecumenical patriarch took root within the American church. Some church members sought to make the American church autocephalous, or self-administering, as are many of the national Orthodox churches of Europe and the Middle East.

Activists, many of whom later sided with GOAL, also sought the unification of the various American Orthodox churches that to this day still reflect their Old World ethnic divisions.

Spyridon, a chainsmoker who rarely smiled in public, was believed to be sympathetic to autocephaly and the creation of a uniquely American Orthodox church that included Russian, Serbian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Syrian, Ukrainian and other Orthodox believers.

“We are not talking of imposing unity, we’re talking of constructing unity,” he told Religion News Service in September 1996. “I think the American people are for such unity.”

But just one year later, Spyridon was embroiled in the fallout from his actions in the Hellenic College-Holy Cross case, putting an end to the widespread support the new archbishop enjoyed upon his arrival.

Rather than backing changes in the church, his critics saw him as actually working to scuttle moves toward independence from the ecumenical patriarch and the formation of a pan-Orthodox American church. Such actions on his part were given by critics as the reason why Bartholomew, who sought to maintain his authority over the U.S. church, stuck by Spyridon as long as he did.

Kishkovsky acknowledged that Orthodox unity in the United States suffered under Spyridon, who he said demanded to be treated as the nation’s de facto Orthodox leader.

“There was a spirit of confrontation with the other Orthodox churches here the past three years. I do not see Demetrios as being confrontational,” said Kishkovsky, who said he has known the new archbishop for more than two decades.

DEA END RIFKIN