LECTURE By Ecumenical Patriarch: University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford (17 September 2026)

“RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONTESTED ECOSYSTEMS 

Law, Religion and Foreign Policy in a New International Order”

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Orthodoxy and Human Rights – Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (Oxford Law School, 17 September 2026)

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Introduction

Eminent Professors,

Distinguished participants,

It is a great joy and honour for us to be this morning together with you at this prestigious Law School of the University of Oxford. We take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the Oxford Centre for Law and Religion and to its Director Professor Peter Petkoff for organising this esteemed Round Table of experts to discuss matters of concern related to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its sacred mission in the contemporary world. As an introduction to stimulate your deliberations, we would like to share with you the official position of the Church of Constantinople on the question of the relation between human rights and the Eastern Orthodox Church, one of the most timely issues in the field of law and religion studies and one of the most pressing matters for the encounter of Christianity with modernity. 

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the occasion of his conferral as Honorary Doctor of the University of Chichester

Address of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the occasion of his conferral as Honorary Doctor of the University of Chichester, 16 September 2026

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the Participants of the 27th International Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches

Address by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the Participants of the 27th International Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches at the “FANARION” Orthodox Christian Dialogue Centre 

(Budapest, September 4th, 2026)

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The “Green Patriarch” and the Sin Against Creation

Reflections on this year’s Message of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for the Protection of the Natural Environment

By Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne PANAGIOTIS KAPODISTRIAS

Every September 1st, as we mark the beginning of the Indiction and the opening of a new ecclesiastical year, the Great Church of Christ calls us to look at the world around us: the earth beneath our feet, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the trees, the animals, the seas — the whole of that creation which God saw as “very good” and entrusted to humankind both as a blessing and as a responsibility. Since 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has dedicated this day to prayer for the protection of the natural environment, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has served this cause with such remarkable consistency that the title “Green Patriarch” has become internationally associated with his ecological witness.

Patriarchal Message for the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year and the Solemn Day of Prayers for Natural Environment (September 1, 2026)

 

† B A R T H O L O M E W

BY THE MERCY OF GOD

ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE–NEW ROME
AND ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH

GRACE, PEACE, AND MERCY
UNTO THE ENTIRE PLENITUDE OF THE CHURCH
FROM THE FASHIONER OF ALL CREATION

OUR LORD AND GOD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST

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Most Reverend and Right Reverend Brother Hierarchs, and blessed children in the Lord,

By the grace of God, the giver of all good things, we enter today into the new ecclesiastical year, honouring and celebrating at its commencement, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, the “Day of Prayer for the Protection of the Natural Environment.”

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW: “ECUMENISM AND MERCY: OVERCOMING HISTORICAL INERTIA”

 VILNIUS, 8 JUNE 2026

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Your Eminence Gintaras Grušas, Archbishop of Vilnius, beloved brother in the Lord,

Your Eminences, Excellencies, Graces,

Reverend Fathers,

Esteemed audience,

Conveying the fraternal blessings of the Church of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, to all the participants of the World Apostolic Congress on Mercy, we have a duty, touching upon the agony of divided Christianity and traversing the centuries that accumulated successive wounds upon the body of the Church, to confront reality. If we excavate the historical subsoil, attempting to understand in the end the meaning of reconciliation, we perceive that the division of the Churches was produced chiefly by the transformation of theology itself into state ideology. Suffocatingly trapped was the message of salvation within geographical and political borders. Most frequently degraded is the concept of mercy, perhaps by an imperceptible but deeply rooted habit of the centuries, into a sentimental concession in the field of ecclesiastical geopolitics, into a diplomatic courtesy among hierarchs, losing entirely its radical character. The East and the West, at various historical junctures, required alterity exclusively to define their own identity.

CATECHETICAL HOMILY For the Opening of Holy and Great Lent (2026)

 

+ BARTHOLOMEW

By God’s mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome

and Ecumenical Patriarch

To the Plenitude of the Church

May the grace and peace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ;
and from us, prayer, blessing, and forgiveness.

Most honorable brother Hierarchs and blessed children in the Lord,

Filled with sacred emotion, we enter once again, by God’s goodwill, into Holy and Great Lent, the arena of ascetic struggle, the time of fasting and repentance, of humility and prayer, of spiritual vigilance and love, with the eyes of our heart directed to the life-giving Cross of the Lord, which guides us all toward Holy Pascha that opens the gates of Paradise to the human race.

Is there a realistic prospect for the restoration of relations between the Phanar and Moscow?

By Archpriest of the Ecumenical Throne PANAGIOTIS KAPODISTRIAS

The course of relations between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Patriarchate of Moscow has been tested repeatedly throughout history, culminating in recent years in developments that have revealed a complex reality in which ecclesiastical diplomacy, theological principles, and geopolitical balances intersect with intensity and instability.

“I Want to Drink the Entire Bosphorus!” On His All-Holiness Bartholomew’s 35 Years as Ecumenical Patriarch

By His Eminence Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden

“The spirits return at night,

Little lights from unredeemed souls,

And if you look up there on the battlements,

You will see figures staring back at you.

Patriarchal Encyclical for Christmas 2025

+ B A R T H O L O M E W

By God’s Mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch

to All the Plenitude of the Church

Grace, Mercy and Peace from the Savior Christ Born in Bethlehem

Most honorable Brother Hierarchs,

Beloved children in the Lord,

Having once again been found worthy of reaching the great feast of the Nativity in the flesh of the Son and Word of God, we glorify the “inexpressible and incomprehensible condescension” of the Savior of the human race and Redeemer of all creation from corruption, even as we proclaim with the angels “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill to all people.” [1]

WELCOME by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Ecumenical Service in Nicaea

 

WELCOME by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Ecumenical Service in Nicaea 

(November 28th, 2025)

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Your Holiness, Your Beatitudes, Your Eminences, Venerable Hierarchs and Clergy, Representatives of Christian Churches, Communions and Organizations throughout the world, 

Brothers and sisters in Christ:

WHERE HEAVEN MEETS EARTH: A Meditation on Faith, Science, and our Planet

+B A R T H O L O M E W

Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch

Address delivered on Acceptance of the Templeton Prize

(New York, September 24, 2025)

Address of Ecumenical Patriarch to the Council of Foreign Relations

ADDRESS OF HIS ALL-HOLINESS ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW – To the Council on Foreign Relations

New York, September 19, 2025

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Remarks of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Ecumenical Service, Riga Dome Cathedral

Remarks of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Ecumenical Service, Riga Dome Cathedral 

(September 13, 2025)

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: The Church Faced with the Ecological Crisis Today: Science, Ethics, Common Action

Public Lecture of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: The Church Faced with the Ecological Crisis Today: Science, Ethics, Common Action – University of Latvia, Riga 

(September 12, 2025)

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Patriarchal Message for the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year and the Solemn Day of Prayers for Natural Environment (September 1, 2025)

† Bartholomew

By the Mercy of God

Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch

Grace, Peace, and Mercy unto the Plenitude of the Church

From the Fashioner of All Creation

Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: “COME WITH YOUR PEACE”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Calls for “Peace in a World That Hungers and Thirsts for Unity, Solidarity, and Integrity Like Never Before”

On Saturday, August 23, 2025, His All-Holiness attended an Ecumenical Prayer Service as part of the Lutheran Church’s Ecumenical Celebration – Time for God’s Peace – at the Great Church in Stockholm, Sweden. King Carl Gustaf, Queen Silvia and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson were in attendance.

Keynote Address by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Meeting of the World Council of Religions for Peace

(Istanbul, July 29, 2025)

“Contradictions and Prerequisites of Interreligious Dialogue”

Your Eminences,

Your Excellencies,

Mr. Secretary General,

Distinguished members of the World Council,

Dear friends and colleagues,

ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW Remarks – Pilgrimage “From Rome to New Rome” [Phanar, July 20, 2025]

Your Eminence, Cardinal Joseph Tobin,

Your Eminence, Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, 

Reverend Fathers, 

Dear Pilgrims, 

Beloved children in the Lord,

With heartfelt joy, we welcome you today to the sacred and historic city of Constantinople – New Rome – as you continue your blessed pilgrimage, “From Rome to New Rome.” Your journey, which leads from the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome to the seat of the Holy Apostle Andrew here in Constantinople, and soon to the ancient city of Nicaea, is a powerful and visible testimony to the Spirit at work in our midst, guiding us along the path of reconciliation, understanding, and unity.