c. 1997 Religion News Service

BALTIMORE _ Last summer, 20-year-old Arieta Roros returned to her native village on the Greek island of Chios for a family wedding. As it happened, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew visited the island while she was there.

But family obligations came first, and Roros missed her opportunity to see the patriarch. Thursday (Oct. 23), in her adopted hometown of Baltimore, Roros had another chance. This time, she made the most of it.

With her mother, she snuck into an invitation-only, pan-Orthodox worship service that Bartholomew led at this city’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation.”What could I do?”said a laughing Roros.”How many opportunities does a Greek girl from Baltimore get to see the leader of our church?” Roros was one of more than 1,000 faithful from a variety of ethnic Orthodox churches who packed the cathedral’s mixed Byzantine-Romanesque-style sanctuary to see Bartholomew, who has direct jurisdiction over the Greek Orthodox Church and is viewed as the”first among equals”by the leaders of the 14 other autonomous Orthodox Christian churches.

Bartholomew, 57, made this city of ethnically flavored neighborhoods his first stop outside of Washington during his current monthlong U.S. visit.

The patriarch’s last stop in Washington was a breakfast meeting with Vice President Gore, with whom he shares a concern for the environment, before Bartholomew’s motorcade made the hour drive north to Baltimore.

Pomp and politics dominated in Washington, where Bartholomew met with President Clinton, with whom he discussed the environment, Greek-Turkish relations and issues of religious freedom. He also received the Congressional Gold Medal, attended a State Department dinner and participated in official interfaith events with Jews, Muslims and Roman Catholics.

Away from the nation’s capital, Bartholomew began in earnest the more pastoral side of his visit, recalling in his remarks at the cathedral and elsewhere Thursday the struggles of those Orthodox immigrants who established the church in the United States more than a century ago.

He called them”simple, hard-working”people who sought only to build better lives for their families. They brought with them, he said at a Baltimore Convention Center luncheon attended by more than 1,700,”the torch of faith.” The present generation, he said, is responsible for renewing that faith and keeping it”pure.” However, the Rev. Ernest Arambiges, recently retired parish priest of St. Demetrios, one of three Greek Orthodox churches in Baltimore, noted the difficulties involved in keeping Orthodoxy alive in modern America.

Many young people, he said, have drifted away from the church through marriage to non-Orthodox partners, because they do not speak Greek _ the church’s primary liturgical language _ or simply because of the pull of secular society.

Roros, a waitress in a Greek restaurant, underscored his remarks.

She said most young people she knows are less attracted to the church than is she.”I’d say I’m much more religious than my friends,”Roros said.

Asked why, she responded:”A lot don’t think it’s important for them.” Some 50,000 Orthodox Christians _ most Greek, but also including Russian, Ukrainian, Syrian, Ethiopian, Serbian and others _ live in Maryland. They worship in 19 parishes united by theology and worship style, but divided along ethnic lines, as is Orthodoxy worldwide.

In his talks Thursday, Bartholomew called for closer cooperation among various Orthodox groups. As an expression of the sort of unity he foresees for Orthodoxy, the patriarch participated in a Baltimore City Hall event designed to draw attention to International Orthodox Christian Charities. Headquartered in Baltimore, the organization was established in 1992 as a pan-Orthodox humanitarian relief agency.

But Bartholomew’s call for Orthodox unity is a unity on his own terms. While lauding the pan-Orthodox cooperation in the IOCC, Bartholomew also has firmly rejected efforts by American Orthodox leaders in 1995 to forge a more unified voice.

In addition, tensions remain between Bartholomew and the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the independent Orthodox jurisdictions. The rift, rooted in questions of who would have jurisdiction over the Orthodox in Estonia, reached such a critical point last year that the Russian Church suspended relations with Bartholomew and the Ecumenical Patriarchate for three months.

From Baltimore, the patriarch was to travel to New York where he will meet with leaders of the various Orthodox streams in North America, as well as with leaders of the National Council of Churches, the nation’s premier ecumenical agency. Most Orthodox churches in the United States are members of the NCC.

In New York, Bartholomew also is scheduled to address the United Nations.

DEA END RIFKIN