Athinagoras (Patriarch)

Patriarch Athenagoras (1967)

Athinagoras ( Greek Αθηναγόρας , mostly transcribed Athenagoras , * March 25, 1886 in Tsaraplana , Epirus ; † July 7, 1972 in Istanbul , civil Aristoklis Spyrou ) was Patriarch of Constantinople from 1948 to 1972.

Life

He was born in 1886 under the name Aristoklis Spyrou in Tsaraplana, Epirus. In 1910 he became a monk and took the name Athenagoras. During the First World War he fled to Mount Athos . He served as secretary of the Holy Synod of Greece. In 1922 he was elected Metropolitan of Corfu , and in 1930 the Holy Synod of Constantinople appointed him Archbishop of North and South America. During this time he founded the Holy Cross Theological School . The esteem he enjoyed in the United States was evident, for example, in the fact that the American President Harry S. Truman made his own plane available for him to return to Constantinople when Athinagoras was elected Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Patriarch of Constantinople

Athinagoras took office as Ecumenical Patriarch on January 26, 1948. He was very open to questions of ecumenism , which he combined with a great deal of travel activity: He not only visited all Eastern Orthodox patriarchates, but also the seat of the World Council of Churches in Geneva and the Anglican Primate in Canterbury .

Dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church

With Pope John XXIII. he had been friends since then as Patriarch of Venice .

On January 5 and 6, 1964, he met with Pope Paul VI. in Jerusalem , a meeting that resulted in a breakthrough in relations between Rome and Constantinople. The most important gesture was that Pope Athinagoras, as successor to the Apostle Andrew, returned the head of the apostle , which had previously been one of the four main relics in the four pillars of St. Peter's Basilica and which the Crusaders had stolen in Constantinople in 1204 .

This meeting led to the fact that in the following year the Roman Catholic Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, representing the Orthodox Churches, withdrew the mutual excommunications that they had pronounced in 1054 as a result of the Oriental Schism . This was an important step towards reconciliation between the two churches.

On July 25, 1967, Pope Paul VI visited the Ecumenical Patriarch, who returned this visit on October 28, 1967. Patriarch Athinagoras wrote in his Christmas encyclical. “We exchanged a cross and the Holy Cup with His Holiness the Pope of Rome and prayed together that our gracious God would grace our Holy Churches in the East and West as soon as possible, so that we may again share the Communion of the Holy Sacraments as was the case up to the year 1054. "

Web links

• Literature by and about Athenagoras in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Michael Wittig: Athenagoras I. In: Walter Kasper (Hrsg.): Lexicon for theology and church . 3. Edition. Tape. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau.

predecessor	Office	successor
Maximos V.	Patriarch of Constantinople 1948–1972	Demetrios I.