Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, has been awarded the 2025 Templeton Prize. Source: The Tablet.
The annual award, valued at £1.1 million ($2.3 million), is named for American-British investor, banker and philanthropist Sir John Templeton (1912-2008). It is awarded to individuals whose exceptional work reflects Sir John’s vision of using scientific inquiry to explore profound questions about the universe and humanity’s role within it.
Patriarch Bartholomew was recognised for making faith-based environmentalism a “central commitment” in his religious leadership and “his pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world”.
“Ecology is not a political or economic issue. It is mainly a spiritual and religious issue because God created and gave it to us to protect it, to cultivate it, to use it, but not to abuse it. This is the spiritual dimension of ecology,” Bartholomew said in a video address after the announcement last week.
In 2020, the award was broadened to include efforts in public engagement and religious leadership, with the aim of deepening the understanding of how science can illuminate the fundamental questions of the universe and humanity’s purpose within it.
Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOARCH) said that the recognition of Bartholomew’s work “is a cause for exceptional joy throughout our sacred Archdiocese of America, and truly for all Orthodox Christians and people of faith”.
“His All-Holiness has led the Christian world for decades in advocacy and awareness of our responsibility as stewards of God’s Creation,” said a statement from the GOARCH’s Holy Synod after it convened an extraordinary session.
“His extraordinary personality and deep theological understanding have attracted the world’s leading scientists, philosophers, religious leaders, and political figures to the cause of caring for our Planet Earth, the source of our physical life, even as God is the source of our eternal life,” the statement said.
Patriarch Bartholomew joins a distinguished group of recipients that includes Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, and the Czech priest Tomáš Halík.
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Patriarch Bartholomew promotes ‘spiritual’ ecology after Templeton award (By Andreja Bogdanovski, The Tablet)
