LA ORTODOXIA GRIEGA DESDE ATENAGORAS HASTA BARTOLOMEOS PATRIARCAS DE CONSTANTINOPLA SON FEUDOS DE LA MASONERÍA

 

HOW PATRIARCH ATHENAGORAS WAS ELECTED

Matthew Namee

Spyros SkourasIn the mid-20th century, the Skouras brothers — Charles, Spyros, and George — were among the most powerful men in the booming film industry. Charles was president of Fox West Coast and funded the construction of St Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles, using his movie star friends as models for the icons. George was head of United Artists Theaters (now Regal Cinemas) and also worked as an agent of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA). But the most influential of them all was Spyros: the back cover of his memoirs (published in 2013) describes him as “the most influential Greek immigrant in American history and one of America’s preeminent citizens during the Cold War period.” Spyros was both the head of Twentieth Century Fox for more than two decades and also President of Prudential Lines, one of the largest shipping companies in the country.

In 1948, at the dawn of the Cold War, Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos V was forced out of his position and replaced by Patriarch Athenagoras, who was previously the Greek Archbishop of North and South America. I’ve written at length about this fascinating episode in church history, using as my main source a set of declassified CIA documents. As I observed in my earlier work, there are conspicuous gaps in the declassified documents, critical periods where no documents are publicly available. Given how closely the CIA followed the Ecumenical Patriarchate, it seems improbable that these documents do not exist; more likely, they simply remain classified.

Recently, I was provided with some additional declassified documents — a trio of letters from Spyros Skouras to then-Vice President Spyro Agnew and President Richard Nixon, written in 1969. In these letters, Skouras offers a firsthand account of the events surrounding Patriarch Athenagoras’s election and enthronement two decades earlier, and he appeals, at Athenagoras’s direction, for additional U.S. intervention in selecting Athenagoras’s successor.

Back in 1948, Spyros Skouras was 55 years old and had taken the helm of Twentieth Century Fox a year earlier. Here his how he described his interactions with U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall in his May 28, 1969 letter to Agnew (which you can download by clicking here):

As I told you, the late General George Marshall, when he was Secretary of State, called me and asked me to give him my opinion of the then Archbishop Athenagoras of North and South America, now Patriarch of Constantinople. General Marshall wanted to recommend that the Archbishop be considered by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul for the office of Patriarch of Constantinople.

At the time, both General Marshall and the then President, Harry S. Truman, were apprehensive that there might be elected to this important office of Patriarch of Constantinople of the Greek Orthodox Church a man who would not be aware of the importance of American policies abroad, particularly in Communist Russia and its satellite states which are all at least 90% Greek Orthodox.

There were, and are, over 300,000,000 Greek Orthodox adherents in the world and this was therefore an important consideration. Both President Truman and General Marshall felt that the man who was chosen for the office of Patriarch had to be not only a great spiritual leader, who enjoyed the esteem and affection of all his spiritual subjects, but one who was also American-oriented in his thinking.

Aside from this, he also had to be approved by the Turkish Government and be a Turkish citizen before he was elected by the Holy Synod. This was in keeping with the terms of the Lausanne Treaty, executed between Turkey and Greece in 1922.

Naturally, I recommended His Holiness, then Archbishop, very highly.

President Truman and Archbishop Athenagoras, February 1947Skouras then goes on to describe in further detail his relationship with Athenagoras and his high opinion of the Archbishop. Then he says,

Therefore, General Marshall, in his capacity as Secretary of State, had no hesitation in sponsoring His Holiness and thanks mainly to his efforts and influence, the Holy Synod decided to elect Archbishop Athenagoras as Patriarch and the Turkish Government agreed to his election.

Skouras then describes what happened next — Athenagoras’s trip to Istanbul aboard President Truman’s private plane, with Skouras as one of the select passengers:

In 1949, President Truman sent his private plane — the Sacred Cow — to take His Holiness to Istanbul for his enthronement and a small group of Greeks and Americans of Greek descent, of whom I was privileged to be a member, accompanied His Holiness.