ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW I PUBLISHES HIS CHILDHOOD MEMOIRS IN TURKISH
Benjamin Harvey

AP Worldstream
Jun 30, 2006

A cocktail party may be the last place you’d expect to see the holiest
man in Orthodox Christendom.

But there was Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader
of the Orthodox Church, standing at one end of a hotel terrace
overlooking the Sea of Marmara, throwing his own cocktail party on
a recent Thursday evening.

The event was the release in Turkish of Bartholomew’s book, "When a
Patriarch was a Child."

Bartholomew was, of course, the life of the party.

He wore a long black robe and a thick white beard, a black hat,
glasses and a silver sun medallion around his neck. He gave a short
speech and then the music started _ among the songs was a throaty
rendition of "My Way."

Then Bartholomew began to mingle, shaking hands, kissing people on
the cheek, signing autographs, talking with a man in a wheelchair. You
might have thought he was running for public office.

And that’s what some Turks are afraid of. Every action Bartholomew
takes in this militantly secular, 99 percent Muslim country is loaded
with political undercurrents.

For those who don’t know the importance of the patriarch, the
explanation of many Orthodox Christians is often this: "He’s like
the pope."

Not really.

Bartholomew is "first among equals" in the more than 250 million-strong
Orthodox church. He controls several Greek Orthodox churches directly,
but has trouble reining others in, like the Russian Orthodox and
Armenian Orthodox, who seem to enjoy their independence.

Today he heads a Christian community that for more than 17 centuries
has been centered in Istanbul. Only back then it was called
Constantinople, and Turkey wasn’t 99 percent Muslim like it is today.

At the head of the Orthodox hierarchy, Bartholomew denies a pope-like
role, but says his power is in coordinating the works of the Orthodox
worldwide.

Turkey refuses to officially recognize that power, saying Bartholomew
is not the "ecumenical" patriarch, but the leader only of Turkey’s
tiny Greek Orthodox community, which numbers just a couple thousand.

His book of 89 childhood memoirs, translated recently from Greek
to Turkish, aims to assuage Turkish fears that Bartholomew wants to
increase his power and carve out an autonomous, Vatican-like state
in Turkey.

Some here see that as a serious threat, and protests follow the
patriarch whenever he leaves his wooden dwelling on Istanbul’s Golden
Horn. Kemal Kerincsiz, the ultranationalist head of the Turkish
Lawyers’ Union, told The Associated Press this week that he submitted
a petition with 2.5 million signatures to the government, asking for
the patriarchate to be transplanted to Greece.

Kerincsiz said Bartholomew’s book was a ruse. "Patriarch Bartholomew
from beginning to end has been hiding his real goals," he said. "This
is nothing more than a road to the establishment of a mini religious
state."

Kerincsiz’s 2.5 million are especially fearful that the European Union,
which has demanded that Turkey improve its treatment of religious
minorities and reopen the Heybeliada Seminary where Bartholomew
trained, will support the patriarch. They think Europeans, especially
Greeks, have always been hoping to carve Muslim Turkey into pieces.

An ethnically Greek Turkish citizen born on February 29th of a leap
year, Bartholomew seemed destined to inhabit a strange world.

"When a Patriarch was a Child" gives Turks a glimpse into that world.

The self portrait that emerges is often one of startling innocence,
given the accusations of political plotting swirling around him. We
read about a child _ then called Dimitrios Arhondonis _ who grew up
on a predominantly Greek island called Gokceada (Imroz in Greek),
who loved books, his family, his country and nature, and who then
found God and decided to become a priest.

In his earliest writings, the 10-year-old Bartholomew talks mostly
about nature, farm work and animals. Charmingly childish sentences
abound, like: "We have to love and protect birds, who are our best
friends."

Bartholomew shows an early attraction to fables with clearly stated
morals.

Over the course of the book, we see these fables fade out and get
replaced by religious feeling, which seems to combine his moral sense
with his awe of nature.

"I believe in God because the mountains, seas, rivers and everything
I see around me cannot have been created by man," he writes. He says
he also believes because he thinks most injustices go unpunished in
this world and must be punished in the next _ and because he has seen
his prayers answered.

Significantly, much of the book focuses on Bartholomew’s high school
years at the Halki Theological School on Heybeliada Island, which he
refers to as "a part of heaven" during the book.

The school was closed in 1971 by the Turkish government, when Turkey
decided that independent religious institutions were incompatible
with the secular state. Bartholomew says he sees the closure of the
school as an attempt to starve the patriarchate of new leaders.

"This means that the government of the Republic of Turkey wants to
shut down the patriarchate. Because if it has no personnel, how can
it function?" he asks in the introduction.

Under Turkish law, all religious leaders _ including the patriarch _
must be Turkish citizens, which means the pool of potential Orthodox
leaders to choose from has shrunk dramatically over the years along
with Turkey’s shrinking Greek minority. This is another reason why
Greeks are so desperate to reopen the Halki seminary.

Bartholomew says he remains an optimist, and that with Turkey striving
for EU membership, the situation can change.

For many people, it’s surprising just how loyal Bartholomew is to
Turkey, despite all the protests and his claims that Christians are
treated as second-class citizens.

Speaking Turkish slowly, deliberately and with a heavy accent, the
patriarch spoke to the group gathered around him at the launch.

"Inshallah, this small book will add a small piece to the society’s
peace and togetherness."

Then he went back under a small canopy and signed autographs.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress