Dimitrios I; Led Eastern Orthodoxy

Patriarch Dimitrios I, spiritual leader of the world’s 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians and a champion of Christian unity, died Wednesday of a heart attack, his doctor said.

The 77-year-old primate had been in the intensive-care unit of the American Admiral Bristol hospital since Monday after suffering a severe heart attack.

Dr. Warren Winkler, chief medical director of the hospital, reported earlier Wednesday that Dimitrios seemed to be recovering from the first seizure.

But Frank Turnaoglu, the doctor attending Dimitrios on Wednesday, said the primate suffered another severe heart attack late Wednesday night, went into shock and died.

He held the title Archbishop of Constantinople (known as Istanbul since 1930) and was known as primus inter pares, Latin for “first among equals,” of the five senior Eastern Christian leaders.

He presided over worldwide Orthodoxy, which is divided into 14 churches of many ethnic groups, including Albanian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian and Russian. The churches share a common faith and sacraments.

Although the patriarch holds little authority over the independent Orthodox churches, his influence remains strong.

Dimitrios was enthroned on July 18, 1972, and in July, 1990, became the first of the patriarchs of Istanbul to visit North America. He visited President Bush, conducted services at a Manhattan church, had lunch at the United Nations and toured Niagara Falls.

About 6 million of the church’s membership live in the United States.

He was considered the most adventurous of the modern patriarchs; he received Pope John Paul II in 1979 at his small Greek Orthodox enclave in Instanbul.

In December, 1984, he made his first Western trip, traveling to the Vatican to meet with the Pope and then to England to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1987 he visited Russian Orthodox Church leaders, the first such meeting since the 16th Century.

Patriarch Dimitrios was the 269th successor to St. Andrew, the apostle to whom Orthodox Christianity traces its roots.

A Turkish citizen, Dimitrios lived in Istanbul, where tradition holds that Andrew founded the church. Orthodox Christians continue to call the city by its Byzantine name of Constantinople.

The patriarchate parallels the office of the Pope, which traces back to Andrew’s brother, the apostle Peter.

Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism split definitively almost 1,000 years ago over differences about the origin of the Holy Spirit and over the Roman Pope’s claim of authority over the eastern church. But the two churches maintain similar beliefs on most points.

In 1964, Dimitrios’ predecessor, Athenagoras, visited Pope Paul VI. The following year the mutual excommunications imposed by the Greek and Roman churches were lifted after more than 900 years.