Archbishop Elpidophoros to Bartholomew: “We are grateful to the Mother Church”

Near the close of his remarks at the Phanar, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew offered his guests an image whose plainness was the point. “Each one of us is a drop,” he said. “The ocean is the Ecumenical Patriarchate.” Spoken by the leader of the Church who has now completed thirty-five years on the Ecumenical Throne, it was self-effacement of a deliberate kind.

The anniversary of his election and enthronement brought Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, to Istanbul. They came on a pilgrimage organized jointly by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, which runs from October 20 to 25, 2026.

Archbishop Elpidophoros spoke first. Surveying three and a half decades of patriarchal ministry, he singled out the Ecumenical Patriarch’s initiatives for the unity of Orthodoxy, his dialogue with the wider Christian world, and his long work for the protection of the environment. A ministry like this one, the Archbishop said, should be measured by its quality and its reach as much as by its length, and he admitted that its accomplishments were difficult even to list.

He then…