Descendant of St. Andrew

Pope Paul VI is the 261st successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome; Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople is the 261st successor of St. Andrew, legendary founder of the church there. Once the two sees were equal in strength and power. Now, the Pope is infallible ruler of 558 million Roman Catholics. Athenagoras is somewhat grudgingly acknowledged as primate by the other patriarchates and churches of Orthodoxy (total membership: perhaps 150 million), but he exerts direct jurisdiction over scarcely 2,000,000 people, mainly in Turkey, the Dodecanese Islands and the U.S.

Nonetheless, tall (6 ft. 4 in.) Patriarch Athenagoras, a multilingual diplomat-priest, makes up in personal stature what he lacks in spiritual authority. "He is an outstanding churchman," says one Vatican official, "a modernizer in the same tradition as John XXIII."

Too Old for the Army. Born in the northern Greek village of Vasilikon when it was still under Turkish rule, Aristokles Spirou entered the Orthodox Seminary near Istanbul in 1903, took the name Athenagoras (rhymes with again a chorus) when he was ordained a deacon. He was raised to episcopal rank in 1922, and came to the U.S. in 1931 as Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America. Athenagoras became an American citizen, even tried to enlist after Pearl Harbor, was turned down as too old.

Athenagoras was elected Patriarch of Constantinople in 1948. His predecessor had gone mad on the job, which ranks among the most difficult spiritual posts in Christendom. The Patriarch can seldom act without checking first with the other churches, which sometimes find it convenient to undermine his authority. Particularly antagonistic is the big Russian church, to which more than a third of the world's Orthodox Christians belong. Orthodoxy in Greece has mixed feelings about the Patriarch. Rome-hating Archbishop Chrysostomos of Athens deplored Athenagoras' Holy Land visit as "hasty." But many laymen and lower clergy admire the Patriarch and condemn the in transigence of Greece's Holy Synod.

Athenagoras must often maintain polite diplomatic silence in the face of open hostility from Turkish Moslems. Orthodox clergy, except for the Patriarch himself, are forbidden to wear clerical garb in public. Last week Istanbul papers bitterly attacked Athenagoras for not condemning the Greek Cypriots.

Breaking the Ice. The patriarchal palace is a dusty little compound near the lumberyards of old Stamboul, across the Golden Horn from modern Istanbul. There, Athenagoras rises at 7 for prayer, spends most of his days keeping up with a vast worldwide correspondence and seeing visitors, to whom he offers a tidbit of sickly sweet Turkish jam. Eager to prod Orthodoxy into a dialogue with other churches, Athenagoras looked forward to his meeting with the Pope. "The ice has been broken," said Athenagoras. "Soon a new era will begin in the history of Christendom."

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