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The Economist - August 17, 1996

An old Greek lobby, renewed

ATHENS - GREEK Orthodox bishops in black robes and stovepipe hats are strikingly familiar figures on the diplomatic cocktail circuit in New York and Washington.

Most are politicians as much as churchmen. Archbishop Spyridon, the new head of the Greek Orthodox church in America, is no exception.

As well as caring for the souls of about 1.5m Americans of Greek descent who embrace Orthodoxy, Spyridon will --unofficially-- become the new leader of the punchy Greek-American lobby. Some reckon that, beyond America, he has even greater clout as a sort of foreign minister for the ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew, the professed spiritual head of all the world's Orthodox Christians. In that role, Spyridon could well become more effective than his boss based in Istanbul, once the hub of Orthodoxy but now the fragile seat of a church barely surviving on the sufferance of its Muslim hosts.

Istanbul's once flourishing Orthodox community has shrunk to fewer than 3,000 ageing Greeks. It is tourists from Athens who fill the church in the crummy Fener district at Easter and Christmas. Bartholomew is scared stiff of Turkey's resurgent Muslims and new Islamist government. Having a strong arm in New York matters more than ever.

Spyridon, 52, was a clever choice. America-born, he speaks five languages and surfs the Internet. Before becoming Bishop of Italy in 1991, he spent two decades working for the patriarchate in Geneva and Rome. He should get on well with New York's big fettas, whom he will entertain in the archdiocese's grand building off Fifth Avenue.

But he has ground to make up. His predecessor, 85-year-old Archbishop Jacovos, has been bugged by the American taxman over church property. Worse, he got on badly with Bartholomew in Istanbul. A key task for Spyridon will be to shore up the patriarch.

Not an easy task. The patriarch's place as head of world Orthodoxy is shaky. Relations with the resurgent Russian Orthodox church are cold. His place in Turkey is shakier still. Even secular governments there have ma life hard: it took an appeal from ex-President Jimmy Carter to win permission for the patriarchate to rebuild some premises destroyed by fire 40 years before. Turkey's new prime minister has even talked of turning Santa Sophia, once the mother church of Orthodoxy, then after the Turkish conquest of 1453 a mosque, and now--since Ataturk--a secular tourist sight, back into a mosque. As his Turkish flock shrinks, some Greeks fear, the patriarch could be squeezed out of Istanbul altogether. That is something that Spyridon, with his energy and diplomatic wiles, will be expected to prevent.

[ The Economist Newspaper - U.S. Edition - August 17, 1996 - p. 44 ]