Archbishop Geron Iakovos, leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in America for 37 years and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, died on April 10 from a pulmonary ailment. He was 93.
Iakovos headed the two million followers of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America from 1959 to 1996.
He graduated with his second Master’s degree from the Harvard Divinity School in 1945.
Iakovos was a strong supporter of ecumenism, which he described in 1960 as “the hope for international understanding, for humanitarian allegiance, for true peace based on justice and dignity, and for God’s continued presence and involvement in modern history.”
He was instrumental in establishing dialogues between the Orthodox and other churches in the U.S. and also received widespread media attention for marching with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 as a show of his support for improved race relations and human rights.
In a speech at Iakovos’ New York City funeral service on April 14, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Iakovos “truly walked the walk, talked the talk.”
Iakovos also became the first Greek Orthodox archbishop to meet with a Roman Catholic Pope in 350 years when he met Pope John XXIII in 1959.
He spent nine years on the World Council of Churches and met with every U.S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to William J. Clinton. Jimmy Carter awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1980.
Iakovos maintained traditional Orthodox beliefs such as opposing female ordination, but came into conflict with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church after he supported a move by 29 bishops towards the administrative unification of Eastern Orthodox churches in America. It is widely believed that this clash forced him to resign in 1996.
Iakovos was born Demetrios Coucouzis in 1911 in Imvros, Turkey. In 1934 he received a Master’s degree from Istanbul’s Ecumenical Patriarch’s Theological School and was ordained to the Church in Lowell, Mass. in 1940. He became a U.S. citizen in 1950.
Iakovos has no immediate survivors.
He was buried on April 15 in the grounds of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Mass.
—Alexandra C . Bell
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