[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 160 (Tuesday, September 30, 2025)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E919]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




WELCOMING THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE, HIS ALL HOLINESS 
                              BARTHOLOMEW

                                  _____
                                 

                             HON. DON BACON

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 30, 2025

  Mr. BACON. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my constituents at St. John the 
Baptist Greek Orthodox Church in Omaha, I would like to welcome their 
Spiritual Leader, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All 
Holiness Bartholomew, to the United States. He is visiting the United 
States next week to meet with the president and members of the House 
and Senate Leadership and to receive the revered Templeton Prize.
  Known as the ``Green Patriarch,'' he is well known for his efforts to 
promote ecology and the protection of the environment. He has been at 
the forefront of religious freedom and bringing together others from 
many faiths to work towards better cooperation and understanding. 
Through dialogue and visitations, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew 
has significantly advanced Orthodox relations with the Roman Catholics, 
Lutherans, Baptists, and others through visitations and open dialogues.
  In addition, His All Holiness has visited several Orthodox Nations 
that were part of communist Eastern Europe to strengthen his contacts 
and relations with various Orthodox national churches there.
  The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has brought together Christians, 
Muslims, and Jews at international peace conferences and meetings to 
advance greater cooperation and mutual understanding. His efforts to 
promote mutual respect and religious tolerance included having 
theological conversations with Muslim and Jewish leaders.
  His push for peace includes calling out both the Russian state and 
the Russian church for the invasion of Ukraine. In Ecumenical Patriarch 
Bartholomew's opinion, he says, ``This is the theology that the sister 
Church of Russia began to teach, trying to justify an unjust, unholy, 
unprovoked, diabolical war against a sovereign and independent 
country--Ukraine.''
  The Ecumenical Patriarch is a figure who has addressed the European 
Parliament and the U.S. Congress (in 1997 when he received the 
Congressional Gold Medal), and has met Heads of State in Great Britain, 
Canada, South America, Greece, Russia, Norway, Finland, Serbia, 
Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Ethiopia, Korea, and Cuba. As Ecumenical 
Patriarch (the only Christian Leader in the world who is considered 
equal to the Pope of Rome in honor), he has met with every Pontiff 
since John Paul II, including Leo XIV. He has also traveled to Libya, 
Syria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Qatar, and Bahrain, and met 
with both political and religious figures in those Islamic countries, 
many of whom no other Christian hierarch of such stature has ever 
visited.
  I welcome His All Holiness to the United States, and I congratulate 
him on his well-deserved honor.

                          ____________________