REMARKS AND TOAST OF HIS ALL-HOLINESS ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW At the Official Dinner in Honor of His All-Holiness Hosted by Deputy Secretary of State Michael J. Rigas – The Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room, The State Department -Washington, DC (September 16, 2025)
Deputy Secretary Michael Rigas,
Your Excellencies, the Ambassadors of the Many Nations here represented,
Your Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros and Brother Hierarchs,
Honored guests and friends,
Beloved spiritual children in the Lord,
We rise to express our gratitude and appreciation to you, Deputy Secretary Rigas, for this hospitality granted unto us, and for this tribute to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
We rise in this extraordinary space – the Benjamin Franklin State Dining Room of the State Department – as we have on other occasions, when we have been so graciously received by the esteemed representatives of the United States Government.
You do us honor, and this tribute extends throughout the global expanse of the Ecumenical Patriarchate – a trans-national and purely spiritual Institution of the Holy Orthodox Christian Church.
As Ecumenical Patriarch, we have the responsibility to convene and organize the interactions between the various Autocephalous – meaning self-governing – Orthodox Churches. Clearly, many of these Churches are structured around national identities, which include shared history, culture, and language. Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church does not embrace ethno-phyletism as a policy, even when some of our Sister Churches have done so out of political and even financial expediency.
As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to pursue the Kingdom of God, not any kingdom of Man, no matter how inviting. As Orthodox Christians with a continuous history and memory, and who specifically come from the City and Land where Christianity was codified within the context of a newly-converted Christian Roman Empire, we understand the complexity of the relationship between the City of God and the City of Man.
The seventeen centuries, stretching from the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to this very year of 2025, bear witness to the many entanglements that have encompassed Church and State through the ages.
In times past, religion was used to consolidate peoples around specific governments, giving coherence to earthly empires, kingdoms, and nation-states. And this is true of all the Abrahamic Faiths, however we appreciate the historical precedents and current realities we face today.
But has not the human family arrived at a point, when such rigid forms of conformity no longer serve the interests of the People?
As the Ecumenical Patriarchate, we seek to foster interreligious dialogue, mutual respect, and an understanding of coexistence that often eludes the nations of the world.
As national identities seek to reify themselves around certain characteristics – religion often chief among them – they cut themselves off from the nature of diplomacy, embodied here at the State Department. For diplomacy means that one is willing to look at circumstances from the point of view of another. Thus, it requires a capacity, a spaciousness, if you will, to place oneself in another’s condition – to be empathetic, and not only sympathetic. Such aptitude is truly apt for every aspect of life, for it keeps one honest about one’s own intentions and motivations.
So where does that leave the purpose of religion in our modern world? In a place that was not foreseen generations ago.
Today, the significant contribution of the great religious traditions should be to create fields of mutual respect and understanding. Such realms do not serve monarchial ambitions, but rather lead populations to manifest democratic forms of government that are inclusive and are based in the fundamental equality of all citizens, regardless of their origin.
We, who inhabit the religious spheres of influence, are able to do this because we have been tempered by the necessities of coexistence. And inasmuch as all the religions of the world teach the value of every human person, we have been confronted by the need to practice acceptance over rejection. Wherever you think you see religion still serving prejudice and hatred, you are not seeing true religion. You are seeing the manipulation of religious values to serve a kingdom of Man, and not the Kingdom of God. As all we Christians pray in the only prayer the Lord Jesus Christ ever taught us: “For Thine – not mine – is the Kingdom….[1]
As Ecumenical Patriarch, being blessed now with more than three decades of service upon the Throne of Saint Andrew the First Called Apostle, we see most clearly the mission that religion must serve in the world today. It is a vision of integration and of cooperation.
Our goal must be to bring the human family together, despite their ethnic, linguistic, racial, and even religious differences. And we will use the principles of our Faith to do so.
To embrace others, rather than reject them.
To value others, rather than debase them.
To identify with others, rather than objectify them.
In closing, Mr. Deputy Secretary, as we mentioned before, this year is the seventeen hundredth anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. In the Creed that all Christians hold dear, we affirm that the Son of God is of the “same essence” as His Father – homoousios.
This affirmation is no mere intellectual reasoning, but the profound truth that applies to each and every human being, who is equally of the “same essence” as the Son of God, for He took His humanity from one of our own … the Blesséd Virgin Mary.
We know that you are fully aware of these teachings, as you were raised in the Greek Orthodox Tradition, and your father, John, was a graduate of our Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Thus, you share our awareness that the human family is bound together in a deeper relationship that we might have imagined, and in this spirit, we have the key to unlock a happy and fulfilling life for every human being.
Therefore, with thankfulness for this gracious evening, and the opportunity to voice these thoughts, we pray that God will always bless you and all who work for peace and reconciliation in the world.
May God bless you richly, and may God bless America!
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1. Matthew 6:13.