Orthodox leader blesses green agenda

There have been concrete results as well. Bartholomew's 1997 symposium on the Black Sea, which was attended by senior European Union and World Bank officials, led to renewed funding of the international Black Sea Environment Program by both bodies, according to Laurence Mee, who was head of the Program at the time. "It was quite effective in getting the attention of these institutions," he says.

While pursuing his green agenda, Bartholomew has also opened an unprecedented dialogue with the leaders of other faiths, scientists, and political leaders from around the world. He has hosted muftis and cardinals, Anglican archbishops, Jewish rabbis, and Lutheran bishops.

These contacts have helped smooth relations between various churches. Last year, Bartholomew signed a joint declaration on the environment with Pope John Paul II, a move that has helped ease centuries of tension between the Vatican and the Orthodox Churches, which excommunicated one another in the Great Schism of 1054.

"We not only have a common faith, we have common problems," explains Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's chief emissary to other churches. "These [environmental problems] are a bridge between the Orthodox and Catholic world where we can build mutual trust."

"We already share a common interest in preserving God's creation," says Tarasios, the orthodox metropolitan of Buenos Aires. "This lets us display worldwide that there are areas where we can work together [with the Vatican] that don't touch upon more sensitive doctrinal and ecclesiastical issues."

Bartholomew is also using green issues to try to overcome fractious relations among the Orthodox churches, many of which are embroiled in territorial struggles dating to the collapse of the Soviet Union. He's used his shipboard symposia as a politically neutral platform on which to tour much of the former Byzantine Empire and its client states in the Adriatic and Baltic regions, meeting with fellow patriarchs and weeping crowds of the faithful.

But relations with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexi, remain tense. In 1996, the Orthodox world teetered on the edge of a schism over the status of church property in Estonia, claimed by both Constantinople and Moscow. A compromise is being worked out, but relations remain so poor that Bartholomew canceled a ship visit to St. Petersburg last month when Alexi revoked his invitation.

But the biggest obstacle to Bartholomew's environmental agenda may lie in his own parish churches, where it is encountering resistance from conservative rank-and-file priests. Older priests, John of Pergamon admits, "don't feel that this is part of their work," so the patriarchate has focused on bringing environmental education to the theological seminaries. "Our hope is with the newcomers," he adds, "with the new generation of priests."

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