Visit to Highlight Eastern Christianity

The spiritual leader of the world’s 218 million Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, will arrive in the United States on Sunday for a monthlong tour expected to draw attention to Eastern Christianity.

After arriving from Istanbul, Turkey, Patriarch Bartholomew will be feted at the White House and welcomed by civic and church leaders across the country. He is scheduled to deliver a major address Tuesday at Georgetown University on relations with the Roman Catholic Church and to join a dialogue on Orthodox-Muslim relations.

On Nov. 8, Bartholomew is scheduled to deliver another major address in Santa Barbara on religion’s role in protecting the environment. He will be in Los Angeles Nov. 7 and 9, and on the evening of Nov. 8.

Orthodox leaders throughout the country are hailing the visit as historic, saying it is the first time a patriarch of the church has visited the United States since the fall of the former Soviet Union.

“This is a time in the history of the church where the church is completely free,” said the Very Rev. John S. Bakas, dean of St. Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. “Communism no longer dominates the churches of Russia or Eastern Europe, and there seems to be reasonable tolerance in Turkey to the role of the patriarch.”

Bakas said Bartholomew’s trip is not to evangelize, but to promote understanding and cooperation.