Death of a Patriarch
Wall Street Journal Online
The man who tried (but failed) to unify America’s Orthodox church.
BY ALEXANDER F.C. WEBSTER
Friday, April 15, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
With the eyes of the world fixed on Rome–upon the death of Pope John Paul II and the gathering of cardinals to pick his successor–many Americans might have missed the quiet passing of another prominent bishop. Earlier this week, His Eminence Archbishop Iakovos died peacefully at the age of 93. Today he will be interred in Brookline, Mass.
Though not a pope in any familiar sense of the term, Archbishop Iakovos wielded an almost papal authority among the roughly two million Greek Orthodox in America, as well as among two million Orthodox Christians of other assorted ethnic origins. He was the senior Orthodox hierarch in the U.S. from 1959 to 1996–a reign half again as long as Pope John Paul II’s celebrated pontificate in Rome.
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Jacobse | Orthodox Christianity |
I do not know a great deal, well, actually I know practically nothing about Archbishop Iakovos. I would very much like to see a well done biography of this man. This brief article gives me the impression that the Archbishop was very embraced a thoroughly Christian counter-culture.
I was struck by these paragraphs:
“In a final statement [of the Ligonier conference], the bishops spoke glowingly of their commitment to “a common vision of mission,” of their conviction that all the Orthodox of North America are “called to plan together and work together” in reaching beyond the ethnic boundaries of the churches. The bishops–with Greek, Russian, Syrian, Lebanese, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian and American roots–pledged to avoid “the creation of parallel and competitive Orthodox parishes.”
“While many of the Orthodox faithful have long prayed for such an outcome, the meeting apparently triggered alarms in Istanbul, historic seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, “first among equals” in the 300-million-strong Orthodox world. Within 20 months, Archbishop Iakovos retired at the behest of Patriarch Bartholomeos, who reportedly saw in the archbishop’s efforts an attempt to detach the Greek Orthodox flock in North America from their mother church.”
I know this sounds cynical, but this move by Patriarch Bartholomeos looks to be motivated by little more than fear of losing money. Maybe I have the situation completely wrong and perhaps someone more knowledgable about this can correct me. However, doesn’t the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul get a significant amount of money from the Greek Orthodox churches in America? We all know that the Greek Orthodox church in Istanbul is literally dying. And I strongly suspect that there are not a great deal of funds going from the Orthodox in Greece to their brothers and sisters in Istanbul. Can anyone elaborate on this for me. I would be very interested.
We’re working on such a biography right now over at OrthodoxWiki:
Iakovos (Coucouzis) of America
You can also find there links to lots of other resources regarding His Eminence.