Selection of Leader Signals Change for Greek Archdiocese

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

Spyridon succeeds Archbishop Iakovos, who 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 last week on his 85th birthday. Almost simultaneously in Istanbul, a 12-member Holy Synod, headed by Bartholomew, the preeminent 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 the 51-year-old Spyridon differs from his Greek-born predecessor 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 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 named at a later date for each jurisdiction, according to a statement issued by church officials in Istanbul.

But the changes instituted last week in Istanbul 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.

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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 and help it transcend its ethnic boundaries and articulate a new vision of its theology that has relevance to the contemporary world.

The newly appointed Spyridon was born in Ohio, as George Papageorgiou. His father, the late Constantine Papageorgiou, was a physician, and the family divided their time between the Greek island of Rhodes and the Greek immigrant community of Tarpon Springs, Fla.. His mother, Clara, now lives in Greece.

“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, with 2 million members who 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, he chose the name Spyridon for his new role, 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.

Representing 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 centuries.

“What we see all too often--not only among Orthodox but throughout the world--is a destructive politics of identity,” Spyridon told the assembly. “With its collection of ethnic, racial and religious groups, America . . . is a microcosm of the rest of the world. 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 later that year, during which 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.”

That document was viewed as a kind of “declaration of independence” from ethnic mother churches. But the announcement sent shock waves through the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, where Bartholomew reportedly considered the meeting part of a bid led by Iakovos to establish an independent church, and ordered the plan scrapped.

That embittered many American Orthodox leaders, and Spyridon faces what Orthodox priest Kishkovsky called “the daunting task” of overcoming that bitterness.