On October 22, 1991, Patriarch Bartholomew was elected to the Ecumenical Throne.
His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
Patriarch Bartholomew
Born Dimitrios Arhondonis on the island of Imbros (Turkey) on 29 February 1940, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew graduated from the Theological School of Halki (Turkey) in 1961. He continued his studies at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, where he got a doctorate in Canon Law in 1968. He also pursued post-graduate studies at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey (Switzerland) and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (Germany). He was ordained a deacon in 1961, a priest in 1969, and became the Metropolitan of Philadelphia in 1973. He was elected Ecumenical Patriarch on 22 October 1991 and enthroned on 2 November 1991.
As Pope Francis has written in his encyclical Laudato si (2015), “Patriarch Bartholomew has spoken in particular of the need for each of us to repent of the ways we have harmed the planet. (…) At the same time, Bartholomew has drawn attention to the ethical and spiritual roots of environmental problems, which require that we look for solutions not only in technology but in a change of humanity; otherwise we would be dealing merely with symptoms. He asks us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing” (Laudato si, 8–9).
