Congress Bestows Medal on Orthodox Christian Leader

The patriarch of the Orthodox Christian church received the Congressional Gold Medal on Tuesday, becoming only the fifth religious figure in history to receive the honor.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I said he was humbled to receive “so great a tribute from so great a nation.” The last religious figure to receive the gold medal was Mother Teresa, who was given the medal on June 5, three months before her death.

With House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and other congressional notables listening to his address, delivered in the ornate Capitol Rotunda, the patriarch lauded Congress for helping to fight for human rights and helping preserve the Orthodox faith under communism.

“Although American armed forces are heroic in every sense of the word, for they have given their lives time and again to save the world from catastrophe, if one had to choose a building that represents what is great about America, it would be not the Pentagon, but the Capitol.

“The Pentagon embodies might; but the Capitol embodies right,” he said, to thunderous applause. “ . . . In these halls, human rights are preserved and human dignity is enhanced.”

Bartholomew said that after three centuries, the pendulum of secular faith was swinging back.

“It is no longer considered unfashionable or backward to believe,” he said. “A generation that worshipped many false idols--from drugs and cults to power and wealth--now seeks an authentic tradition for its own children” and is being drawn to a “massive religious revival.”

Later in an address at Georgetown University, a Roman Catholic institution, Bartholomew said the 270-million-member Orthodox church “is always open for any good-faith dialogue but declines to take part in planted squabbles because there is always a danger to be misunderstood.”

Pope John Paul II has made bringing the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches together a principal goal for 2000. But Bartholomew, while stressing the need to begin reconciliation, has been careful to point out he does not advocate reunification.

The churches split in the 11th century in disputes over the growing power of the papacy and doctrinal issues.