Esteemed Greek Orthodox Primus of America Archbishop Iakovos Reposes

Please pray for Archbishop Iakovos, former head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Americas who reposed late yesterday. He was 93. Born Demetrios Coucouzis in Turkey, he took the name Iakovos, which means James, when he was ordained a deacon in 1934.

+ Iakovos headed the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, with an estimated 2 million followers, from 1959 until 1996. During his long tenure as Archbishop, Iakovos led the Greek Orthodox church out of immigrant isolation and into the mainstream of American religious life, playing a leading role in bringing English into the liturgy.

Archbishop Iakovos conflicted with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the titular leader of world Orthodoxy, in 1994 after he convened a meeting of 29 bishops from the 10 North American branches of Eastern Orthodoxy. He was forced into retirement over his support for the idea of uniting the various Eastern Orthodox branches in a single American Church.

After + Iakovos' retirement, Church officials split the North and South American Greek Orthodox Archdiocese into four sections, and Metropolitan Spyridon was appointed as Archbishop of America, serving followers in the United States only. He resigned in 1999 and was replaced by the current Primus, Archbishop Demetrios.

His Eminence met with Pope John XXIII after his 1959 enthronement, becoming the first Greek Orthodox Archbishop in 350 years to meet with a Roman Catholic prelate, and spent nine years as a president of the World Council of Churches. Abp. Iakovos was instrumental in setting up dialogues between Orthodox churches and Anglicans, Lutherans, Southern Baptists and other denominations. ``Ecumenism,'' he said in 1960, ``is the hope for international understanding, for humanitarian allegiance, for true peace based on justice and dignity, and for God's continued presence and involvement in modern history.''

He met every U.S. president from Eisenhower through Clinton, and was one of the U.S. Christian leaders who met with Pope John Paul II in a historic gathering in South Carolina in 1987.

I had the honor of meeting him several times -- the first time when I was a 10 year old RC boy at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, NJ. I was awed by his presence. And it was the first time I ever saw an Orthodox priest (who I then thought were "bearded nuns".) It was there that he convened his Archdiocesan Sobor (that I wandered into while strolling the beach) which forbid "parish gambling" -- especially the scandal of Church B.I.N.G.O. -- which immediately endeared me to him. It is with thanks to His Eminence that gambling is one vice that I never indulged in. Neither would I ever assent to or cooperate with it in any mission or parish were I serve (which resultantly led to criminations and censures against me in former dioceses).

+ Iakovos was born in 1911 on the island of Imvros, Turkey. He earned a master's degree at the Ecumenical Patriarch's Theological School in Istanbul in 1934. Arriving in the United States in 1939, he was ordained to the priesthood in Lowell, Mass., in 1940 and earned a second master's degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1945. He became a U.S. citizen in 1950.

Archbishop Iakovos will lie in state at the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York City on Tuesday and Wednesday, and his funeral will be Thursday morning. Interment will be Friday morning on the Holy Cross Chapel grounds in Brookline, Mass.

AXIOS! AXIOS! AXIOS! --- MEMORY ETERNAL!