Papadopoulos, Chrysostomos

PAPADOPOULOS, CHRYSOSTOMOS. - Archbishop of Athens, b. at Madytos in Thrace on 1 July 1868, d. at Athens on 22 Oct. 1938.

He pursued ecclesiastical studies at the Seminary of Constantinople from 1884 to 1887; then, from 1887 to 1889 at the monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem and at the Evangelical School of Smyrna; from 1889 to 1891 at the Theological Faculty of Athens and from 1891 to 1895 at the ecclesiastical academies of Kiev and St. Petersburg. In 1895 he began his teaching as a professor at the Theological School of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, where he was ordained a priest and made metropolitan in 1900. In 1909 he found himself compelled to leave Jerusalem and for two years he resided in Alexandria. In 1911 he is found in Athens, as a professor at the Rizarios Theological School from 1911 to 1923, and from 1914 also as professor of Church History at the University.

On 8 March 1923 he was elected by the Holy Synod as archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, a post he held until his death, without ever abandoning his historical studies. As archbishop, he exercised a great influence in the politics of his homeland. In the religious field he distinguished himself as a friend of the ecumenical movements and as an irreconcilable opponent of the Greeks united with the Roman Church.

Among his publications the principal ones are: La Chiesa di Gerusalemme, Athens 1900; Il monastero della Croce e la sua Scuola teologica, Jerusalem 1905; Cirillo Luharis, Trieste 1907, to be completed with another work on the same subject published in Alexandria (1913), and numerous articles; Storia della Chiesa di Gerusalemme, Alexandria 1910; La Chiesa di Atene, Athens 1928; Storia della Chiesa di Alessandria, Alexandria 1935. To the anti-Roman polemic belongs the work Il primato del Vescovo di Roma, Athens 1930.

Maurizio Gordillo