His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is the spiritual leader of 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians whose pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world have brought together people of different faiths to heed a call for stewardship of creation.
Using the stature of his office—the highest spiritual authority within the Eastern Orthodox church—he has convened groups of scientists, scholars, political leaders, and clerics from the Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim worlds. His “ecumenical imperative” to care for creation recognizes that science plays a critical role in helping religious leaders accept their responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth. In 1997, he made history by declaring that acts harming the environment—such as pollution, deforestation, and climate change—are not just practical missteps but moral failings. This pastoral teaching introduced a new category of sin—“ecological sin”—which has since influenced both religious and secular discourse on environmental ethics.
