Athenagoras (née Aristocles Spyrou, March 25/April 6, 1886 - July 7, 1972) was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople from November 1, 1948 to July 7, 1972.

Biographical data
He was born on March 25/April 6, 1886 in Tsaraplan (now Vasiliko) in Epirus, which at the time was a yet Ottoman Empire territory. His father, Matthew, was a doctor, and his mother, Helen, came from Konitsa.

In 1903, he entered the School of Theology in Halki. In 1910 he received a degree in theology, became a monk and was ordained a deacon by Metropolitan Polycarp of Elassona. He then served as archdeacon of the Metropolitan of Pelagonia until 1918, when the metropolis ceased to be under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate. In 1919, the then Archbishop of Athens Meletios Metaxakis hired him as archdeacon and secretary of the archdiocese. After the 1922 movement prevailed, he became secretary of the "Pagliriki Union," a movement of loving clergy friendly to the Venezuelan party.

Bishop of Corfu
In December 1922, during the revolutionary government of N. Plastiras and while he was still a deacon, he was elected Metropolitan of Corfu, and was consecrated bishop on December 22, 1922 at the Metropolitan Church in Athens.

He remained in this Metropolis for seven years and demonstrated a wealth of organizational, charitable and publishing work. It is said that during his time this Metropolis became the first to publish a newsletter. There he developed friendly relations with Catholic Corfians and their bishop, Protestants, Jews, Armenians, etc. In July 1930, he represented Church Greece at the Anglican Congress in Lambeth.

Archbishop of America
On August 13, 1930, at the request of Metropolitan Damaskinos of Corinth, he was elected Archbishop of North and South America by the Holy Patriarchal Synod.

During his tenure there, he succeeded in uniting communities divided by the national schism. In 1931, he organized the Fourth Clergy Assembly, which adopted a new constitution for church administration. He established and organized archdiocesan offices, clerical courts, catechetical schools, and paid special attention to building churches and schools. He founded Ladies Philoptochos (1931), the Greek Orthodox Theological School of the Holy Cross in Boston (1937) for the training of clergy, and St. Basil's Academy in Garrison, New York (1944) for the training of catechists and choir directors.

During his archdiocese in the United States, Athenagoras developed good relations with his fellow brothers (Russians, Serbs, Romanians) and Orthodox Christians, but also cultivated very close relations with leading figures in the country, such as presidential couple Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and more specifically President Harry Truman.

Patriarchate
Elections
After Patriarch Maximos V of Constantinople was forced to resign on October 18, 1948, Athenagoras was elected patriarch on November 1, 1948 as Athenagoras I. He was the first patriarch elected without prior Turkish citizenship, following the implementation of Turkish Law-Decree 1092 of 1923, but with the prior approval of the Turkish government. Accordingly, he was given Turkish citizenship and a Turkish passport by the prefect of Istanbul at the airport upon arrival, on the grounds that his hometown was territory of the Ottoman Empire at the time of his birth.

Specifically, on November 1, 1948, the Endemic Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was convened, consisting of 17 archpriests. The three-member vote included high priests-pastors from outside Turkey: the Archbishop of America Athenagoras, Metropolitan Dionysius of Methymnos and Metropolitan Emmanuel of Caw. All three received 11 votes each, while there were six empty seats. Athenagoras was elected in the second round of voting, where he received 11 votes. The others were white and came from supporters of his main rival, Metropolitan Derkos Joachim, who had earlier been excluded from the election process by the Turkish government. Besides, the Turkish press took Athenagoras' election for granted from the beginning, even citing the number of votes he would receive.

Departure from the US
Before leaving for Constantinople, Athenagoras made a long tour of almost all Orthodox communities in America, giving in his various speeches there an outline of the policies he would pursue and calling on everyone to join a new crusade against communism, the "holiest battle" of the Christian world, as he put it at the time.

In particular, at the end of November 1948, speaking at a large meeting of clergy in Boston, which was broadcast by all American media, he stressed, among other things:

Storms of adversity are erupting all around us, and the pernicious spirit of destruction threatens to drown our freedom of conscience, our human ideals and the sacred foundations of Christian civilization (...). On the one hand, Greece is already engaged in a hard struggle to preserve its freedom and territorial integrity. Turkey, on the other hand, is in a constant state of caution in the face of the same threat. In fact, the Truman Doctrine has proven to be one of the most effective factors in the struggle to repel this attack. I urge all Americans to support President Truman's efforts (...). Forgetting this sacred duty at a critical time will be tantamount to deserting and abandoning one's position in the holiest battle ever fought in defense of the ideals of Christianity.

More revealing of the role the new patriarch will play in this time of Cold War was his farewell meeting with US President Harry Truman at the White House, during which warm wishes and thanks were exchanged.

Arrival in Istanbul
On January 26, 1949, an airplane provided by President Truman arrived in Istanbul carrying the newly elected Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, accompanied by Truman's special aide Col. Charles Mara. As the plane passed over Greek airspace earlier, there was an exchange of greetings between King Paul and the patriarch. The reception by the prefect of Constantinople and a large number of arriving Christians and many Muslims, perhaps out of curiosity, was wonderful. The patriarch, exiting the plane, impressed everyone by speaking not only in Greek, but also in Turkish, expressing his appreciation to the American and Turkish authorities.

Immediately After that, the huge motorcade headed to Istanbul's central Taksim Square, where Athenagoras laid a wreath at Kemal Atatürk's statue, with flowers that, it was announced, he himself had cut from the White House gardens. He was enthroned the next day, January 27, 1949. One of his first acts was to travel by rail to Ankara, where he met with President Ismet Inonu and delivered a personal message from President Truman.

His work
Athenagoras' activities in strengthening the internal mission in the climate of the Constantinopolitan archdiocese were significant. He reorganized the Halki School of Theology, appointing new professors and training academic staff, and vigorously improved relations with the Turkish authorities. During his patriarchate, there was a fuller organization of Orthodox parishes abroad, with the elevation of the metropolises in Tiyatir (Western Europe) and Australia to the status of archdioceses, which he supported with auxiliary bishops. In 1959, he visited the Presbyterian patriarchates of the Middle East (Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem), and in 1951 and 1960 he prepared Holy Myrrh. In 1965 he founded the Patriarchal Foundation for Patristic Studies at the Vlatadon Monastery in Thessaloniki, in 1966 the Orthodox Center at Chambezy in Geneva, and in 1968 the Orthodox Academy in Crete.

Despite the prestige and international recognition the Patriarchate gained under Patriarch Athenagoras, this was coupled with the sad events of September 6 and 7, 1955, the so-called September riots, when a Turkish mob, directed "from above," as proven in the trial of Adnan Menderes in 1961, attacked Greek stores, homes and churches, committing widespread destruction and looting. Since these events, under increasing pressure from the Turkish state, Istanbul's Greeks have been gradually forced from their homes. The incidents sparked tensions between Greece and Turkey, rumors of the Patriarchate's removal from Turkey and a relative cooling of the hitherto supportive American factor. Patriarch Athenagoras was described as being in a state of shock after the September events, avoiding convening a synod and in mourning, abstaining from all official services for a year and a half, until Easter 1957.

In July 1958, after the death of Archbishop Michael, he came into conflict with the synod over the question of his successor. The synod supported the candidacy of Metropolitan Meliton of Imbros and Tenedos, while Patriarch Athenagoras supported Bishop James of Melita. The conflict got to the point where the patriarch dissolved the synod, dismissing all the dissidents. He then appointed a six-member synod, which elected Jacob. This synod remained in effect until October 1959.

In September 1961, he convened the First Pan-Orthodox Conference in Rhodes, the first in a series of preparatory conferences for the Pan-Orthodox Synod, which was successfully completed: It proclaimed the unity of the Orthodox, affirmed the right of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to convene such Synods, strengthened relations with the pre-Chalcedonian Churches, and showed Orthodoxy as a solid force, breaking through its localism. This was followed by the Second Orthodox Conference in September 1963 and the Third Orthodox Conference in November 1964.

In 1963, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras visited Mount Athos on the occasion of the celebration of the millennium of the monastic state, and then to Greece. On June 30, he traveled on a Greek warship from Mount Athos to Faliro. There he was received by King Pavlos and government representatives, and a crowd cheered him on his way to Athens. It was his first visit to Greece since ascending to the ecumenical throne in 1949. This was followed by a doxology in the Athens metropolis, the first with the participation of an ecumenical patriarch in the history of the modern Greek state. He then visited Rhodes, Karpathos, Crete, Corfu, Epirus and Macedonia, and was enthusiastically received everywhere. The most moving stop on his tour was a visit to his birthplace, Vasiliko Pogoni.

Inter-Christian dialogues
Patriarch Athenagoras was active in the ecumenical movement, seeking to establish better relations between Christians. He therefore strengthened cooperation with the World Council of Churches, which had been established shortly before his election, by setting up a Permanent Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at its headquarters in Geneva, putting Bishop James of Melite at its head.

As part of his stated intention to reach out to the Roman Catholic Church, Athenagoras made some initial moves under Pope Pius XII, but to no avail. His successor, John XXIII, was more positive and even invited the Orthodox Church to send representatives/observers to the Second Vatican Council. However, rapprochement accelerated after the death of John XXIII (June 3, 1963) and the election of his successor, Paul VI. The first substantive step was his meeting with Pope Paul VI on Sunday evening, January 5, 1964, at the Holy See delegation on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, which took place according to strict protocol. Their second meeting had location the following day at the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, in a more relaxed atmosphere. The two Christian leaders said the road to unity between the two churches is long and difficult, but agreed to establish a commission to promote dialogue between them. The two church leaders held their third informal meeting on the streets of Jerusalem to the cheers of the faithful. This was the first step in the dialogue process.

This symbolic meeting opened up the possibility of genuine dialogue between Orthodox and Roman Catholics for the first time since the schism of 1054. Then, on December 7, 1965, the day of the official closing of the Second Vatican Council, ceremonies marking the abrogation of Anathema 1054 were held simultaneously at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and at the Patriarchal Church of St. George in Fan. Patriarch Athenagoras read the act of revocation, and Pope Paul VI read the papal brief. The cancellation of the anathema provoked many reactions and even an interruption of Patriarch Athenagoras' commemoration by Orthodox bishops even from Mount Athos seeing ecumenism imposed on Orthodoxy.

On July 25, 1967, Pope Paul VI paid an official visit to Fanara. On October 28 of the same year, after touring the patriarchates of Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, Patriarch Athenagoras returned the visit by going to the Vatican. His trip continued to Switzerland, where he inaugurated the Orthodox center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at Chambezy in Geneva, and then to London, where he met with the Primate of the Anglican Church.

Last years and death
On June 28, 1972, Patriarch Athenagoras suffered a fractured thigh. Although his attending physicians recommended that he go to Vienna, he refused. His health suffered complications and he eventually died on July 7, 1972.

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