c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The face behind the long, gray beard is remarkably young for the man Orthodox Christians consider to be the 270th successor to the apostle Andrew. According to Christian tradition, Andrew was the first of the 12 disciples to embrace the teachings of Jesus and carry them out of Palestine to Greece and the world beyond.

Like the Orthodox Church itself, which purports to be the oldest and most authentic form of Christianity, the 57-year-old Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew seems both old and young, ancient and modern, authoritarian and progressive.

Americans know little about Bartholomew, who is sometimes called the”Green Patriarch,”for his efforts to make the environmental ruin of Europe and the Mediterranean a religious and moral issue.

Few are aware of the delicate balance Bartholomew maintains in a 300-million member church united in faith, liturgy and dogma but deeply divided by ethnic and national interests. Or of the crucial role he would like to play as Christianity comes to terms with Islam in portions of the world still recovering from the Cold War.

But Americans will know more about Bartholomew after he arrives in Washington Oct. 19 for a month-long U.S. visit with both religious and diplomatic significance.

He will meet with President Clinton, members of Congress and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He is also scheduled to present an address to the United Nations, make a major statement at Georgetown University about Christianity and Islam, and deliver a message at Southern Methodist University to the Protestant world.

It is the latest stop on a journey into the future, as Bartholomew asserts himself as a unifying force among ethnically and culturally diverse Orthodox churches, and reminds a world on the brink of a new millennium of the relevance of his ancient faith.”The patriarch is a man of wisdom, you can sense that. He’s the first patriarch in so long who is multilingual, young, able to travel and spread the news about the Orthodox faith. He senses that Orthodoxy up to now has not been able to influence the world with the traditions of the early church. But people are looking for that. I feel we’re on the brink of a new era,”said the Rev. Constantine Zozos, pastor of St. Barbara Greek Orthodox Church in Santa Barbara, Calif., whose parishioners will host an environmental symposium when Bartholomew visits California.

Second only in size to the Catholic Church, Orthodoxy has no pope or absolute leader, but is governed by the elected patriarchs and hierarchy of 13 independent churches who meet rarely, but periodically, for councils. If numbers were what counted in the tradition-saturated Orthodox Church, then Patriarch Alexii II, who leads the 100 million-member Russian Orthodox Church, would be the strongest leader.

But as successor to St. Andrew and head of the ancient see of Constantinople, the ecumenical patriarch, an ethnic Greek with Turkish citizenship, is honored as”first among equals.” Unlike the pope, regarded by Catholics as the successor to St. Peter, the ecumenical patriarch enjoys no special doctrinal authority and when Orthodox councils convene, the ecumenical patriarch, like every other leader, only casts one vote.

In a sense, Bartholomew’s ancient see of Constantinople _ located in present-day Istanbul _ is a living relic of the glories of the early church. And therein lies his symbolic power to keep a culturally diverse faith unified and alive.

Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire, one of the highest achievements of the early Christian world. But in 1493, fatally weakened by the Crusades, as well as by political and doctrinal disputes with the militant popes of Rome, Constantinople fell into Muslim hands.

Today, its Christian presence is nearly invisible. The once-proud Orthodox theological school at Halki has long been shuttered, on orders of the Turkish government. The magnificent Orthodox cathedral of St. Sofia is a museum of Islamic art.

Nevertheless, when Bartholomew was chosen ecumenical patriarch in 1991 by the church’s Holy Synod, it became clear the patriarchate was poised to play a new role in a changing world: to rehabilitate a far-flung church that endured a long period of repression in Eastern Europe and is grappling with new geo-political realities.

Bartholomew resides at the Phanar, a Greek Orthodox enclave where the occasional terrorist hurls the occasional bomb through the gates. The most recent blast occurred earlier this year; it was large enough to rattle the residents, but small enough to do only limited damage.

Islamic Turkey, long hostile to the ethnic Greeks in its midst, is a society whose secular government is only just beginning to capitalize on the value _ in tourist dollars, if nothing else _ of the early Christian sites drawing increasing numbers of visitors.

Still, hostility is evident. After Bartholomew convened a high-profile floating symposium of theologians, scientists and political leaders to discuss the environment, one Turkish newspaper carried the headline,”Ecumenical Patriarch pollutes the Black Sea.” Bartholomew has come to power at a crucial time for the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe: The Cold War is over and the Soviet bloc has broken apart. The Orthodox Church in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia, crushed and compromised by a half-century of official atheism, is beginning to revive.

But revival has its hazards. In Serbia, a repressive regime drawn largely from the old Communist establishment, seized upon the 8 million-member Serbian Orthodox Church as a symbol of militant nationalism. As the carnage escalated among Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim enclaves in the former Yugoslavia, the Orthodox Church was widely perceived as both participant and pawn.

In Russia, the newly reconstituted Orthodox Church is faced with a different set of hazards. Recovering its credibility after the remnant of the church that survived Communist persecution was effectively infiltrated by the KGB, the Russian Church is now intent upon serving a new generation of believers whose parents and grandparents had virtually no religious training and who grew up in a society where the institutional church had been obliterated.

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Priests, monks and nuns were killed or imprisoned, 98 percent of Orthodox churches were destroyed or converted to public buildings; and spirituality was hounded out of everyday life.

Now, as much of Russian society appears to be in a moral free-fall, politicians of all stripes are courting the Orthodox Church, which, according to some recent opinion polls, is the only institution in Russia enjoying widespread respect.

Boris Yeltsin’s government has rebuilt Moscow’s Orthodox cathedral. Yeltsin also has signed a controversial law designed to protect the interests of the Orthodox Church at the expense of other Christian groups and new religious movements.

The law, which runs counter to Western notions of religious freedom, has sparked outcry in the United States, the Vatican and elsewhere. And it will likely be an issue of discussion as Bartholomew meets with Clinton and other government leaders.

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Though previous ecumenical patriarchs have been elderly and somewhat distant figures, Bartholomew, who came to power six years ago at the age of 51, has a completely different style.

The son of a barber, born on the Greek island of Imvros now controlled by Turkey, Bartholomew is one of the world’s few religious leaders to have served in the military _ a required stint in the Turkish Army reserve _ before being ordained a priest.

In a manner described as direct, amiable and sometimes blunt, Bartholomew has proceeded to transcend national and ethnic boundaries, asserting his authority over the patriarch of Jerusalem and other leaders of the church.

He has disagreed so severely with Russian Patriarch Alexii II over who should have authority over Orthodox Christians in Estonia and Ukraine that Alexii for a time struck Bartholomew’s name from the list of those for whom he prayed at the conclusion of each celebration of the Holy Liturgy. (The two patriarchs attempted reconciliation recently in Moscow, however, where Bartholomew traveled to talk and pray with Alexii, who now reportedly includes the patriarch in his prayers.)

Taking advantage of Turkey’s desire to be perceived as moderate and gain admission to the European Union, Bartholomew is pressing the government for permission to reopen the theological school at Halki, which would serve as a training center for Orthodox of all nationalities.

Though he is praised by many as a unifying influence and a revitalizing spirit in his church, Bartholomew’s critics wonder whether the ecumenical patriarch really wants to”vaticanize”the church, by centralizing authority with the ethnic Greek hierarchs of Constantinople.

It is a question repeatedly heard in Russia among loyalists to Alexii. But similar criticism also is heard among the 5.6 million Orthodox in the United States.

Most Orthodox Christians in America are the assimilated children of immigrants who came here to escape various forms of oppression in Greece, the Middle East, Russia, Romania, Ukraine and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Others are converts by marriage, or disenchanted evangelical Christians, Catholics or mainstream Protestants drawn to the beauty of Orthodoxy’s lush liturgy and the unchanging nature of its doctrine.

Regardless of their ethnicity, devout Orthodox in America are equally passionate about their ancient church, their place in the American mainstream and their notions of independence.

In America, Bartholomew will mark an uneasy celebration.

MJP END CONNELL