Patriarch Visits Astoria

Photo Peter N. Karalekas His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I celebrating vesper services.

His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I visited the community of St. Demetrios Cathedral in Astoria last Friday. The patriarch, the spiritual leader of 3.5 million Orthodox Christians around the world, first visited St. Demetrios School, where he met with students and youth of the community. He then celebrated a Great Patriarchal Vespers Service in the cathedral, which is the spiritual home of one of the largest Greek Orthodox parishes in America. A memorial service for the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks followed.

Bartholomew I, as Ecumenical Patriarch, is considered the highest authority of the Orthodox church. Since the sixth century C.E., the Ecumenical Patriarch has also been known as the Archbishop of Constantinople, the New Rome. As primus, or first, bishop of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical patriarch undertakes various initiatives of Pan-Orthodox character while coordinating relations between the other churches of the Orthodox Communion, as well as relations between Orthodoxy as a whole and other Christian churches and world religions. He convokes and presides over councils and Pan-Orthodox meetings, consecrates the Myrrh for all Orthodox churches and grants autocephalous status to local churches which have become eligible for elevation to that ecclesiastical rank.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate is also known as the Patriarchate of Constantinople, or the Great Church of Christ in Constantinople. It has its origins in the Year 38 C.E. in which the church was founded in Byzantium by Saint Andrew, "first-called among the Apostles."

The patriarchate of Constantinople is the spiritual center of the Orthodox Church. It is seen as the Mother Church by the ancient Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, by the younger autocephalous churches of Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus Greece, Poland and Albania, and by the autonomous churches of Czechoslovakia, Finland and Estonia.