Archbishop Iakovos, 93; Led Greek Church

Archbishop Iakovos, who led the Greek Orthodox Church in the Americas for 37 years and became known for reaching out to other religious groups as a champion of ecumenism, has died. He was 93.

Iakovos died Sunday at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Conn., of a pulmonary ailment, according to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

The Turkish-born Iakovos headed the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, with an estimated 2 million followers, from 1959 until 1996. He was apparently forced out over his support for uniting the various Eastern Orthodox branches in a single American church.

He 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. During his nine years as co-president of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, he orchestrated other ecumenical meetings with Jews, Muslims and Protestant groups.

A striking figure with a long beard, black robes and veiled headdress, Iakovos was memorably captured in a 1965 Life magazine cover photo, standing beside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during a civil rights march in Selma, Ala.

A lifelong spokesman for civil rights, the archbishop also protested the Vietnam War and lobbied presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Bill Clinton. He supported the 1988 presidential campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, a Greek American whom Iakovos recalled from his days as dean of Boston’s Annunciation Cathedral, when Dukakis was in Sunday school.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter awarded Iakovos the Medal of Freedom.

During his long tenure as archbishop, Iakovos led the U.S. 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.

At the same time, he remained a staunch advocate of Orthodox faith and practices such as banning the ordination of women.

“Only with a true Orthodox faith can one gain an insight to the true meaning of ecumenical and international thinking,” he told 1,500 people at Los Angeles’ St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral on his initial visit as archbishop in 1960. “We must be cautious and vigilant about our faith, that we do not corrupt it with careless rationalism.”

In 1979, as a salute to his ecumenical endeavors, Iakovos received an honorary degree of humane letters from Los Angeles’ Jesuit-run Loyola Marymount University, one of five Catholic institutions to make such an award.

Iakovos was born Demetrios Coucouzis in 1911 on the island of Imvros, Turkey. He earned a master’s degree at the Ecumenical Patriarchal Theological School at Halki 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.