Orthodox patriarch to advocate for Mississippi River

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians, will convene dozens of experts here next month to discuss environmental challenges facing people in the Mississippi River Valley. Bartholomew, known in some quarters as the “green patriarch” for his environmental activism, has convened seven prior environmental gatherings […]

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians, will convene dozens of experts here next month to discuss environmental challenges facing people in the Mississippi River Valley.

Bartholomew, known in some quarters as the “green patriarch” for his environmental activism, has convened seven prior environmental gatherings around the world since 1995.

Although based in Istanbul, Bartholomew has sponsored meetings to focus attention on environmental challenges to the Arctic, the Amazon River, the Adriatic, Baltic, Black and Aegean seas and the Danube River.


In recent years, leaders of many faiths have come to recognize a faith-based duty to care for the earth, said the Rev. Sally Bingham, who heads an environmental ministry in California and is helping to plan the New Orleans meeting.

“Religious leaders are used to saying our responsibility is saving souls. But many are coming to realize that if we don’t protect our air, water and resources, there won’t be any souls to save,” she said.

Bingham said Bartholomew “is one the first leaders of a huge denomination to make this connection.”

Beginning Oct. 18, the weeklong meeting, which opens in Memphis, Tenn., and then moves to New Orleans, will assemble scientists, business leaders and policymakers to discuss environmental challenges to people along the Mississippi River, the patriarch’s office said.

In prior meetings, discussions have often centered on how rivers or other ecosystems need to be protected from degradation. Bingham said the New Orleans conversations will examine how long-term environmental damage, like the loss of coastal wetlands and rising sea levels from climate change, threaten the population of low-lying New Orleans.

Bartholomew recognizes that, “while climate change didn’t cause the levees to break and cause the terrible disaster of Hurricane Katrina, he does recognize that what climate change is doing is causing natural phenomena like storms and droughts to be more severe,” she said.


The trip will be Bartholomew’s second visit to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in 2005.

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