Has Bartholomew’s Sunflower Gone to Seed?

It’s been four years since Elpidophoros Lambrianides, the Metropolitan of Bursa, was selected by Patriarch Bartholomew to take over the primacy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese here in the United States.

It hasn’t been a smooth ride, to say the least. 

To be sure, being the Archbishop of the GOA has never been an easy job.  Unfortunately, one of the things that make it such a precarious position is that the support from this present Ecumenical Patriarch has never been that constant.

We all know the names of archbishops that have been undermined by Patriarch Bartholomew:  Iakovos, then Spyridon, and more recently, Demetrius.  Getting rid of them was usually a long and tortuous process but in the end, they were all shown the door, one way or the other.  

Based on all the recent developments in the geopolitical sphere, one has to ask if Elpidophoros is next in line to be unceremoniously dumped.

Now, this may sound shocking to many of you reading these words.  After all, four years ago, the level of sycophantic bromides that emanated from Archbishop Elpidophoros’ mouth were positively embarrassing.  The one that stuck in my craw was “sunflower,” as in Bartholomew was the “sun” while Elpidophoros was the “sunflower”  that never averted its eyes from that magnificent, life-giving orb as it made its daily trek across the heavens. 

That was then; things are different now.  

As was recently reported by Byzantine Texas, the Charter debacle only appears to be getting worse.  For some mysterious reason, the patriarch, the metropolitans, and the archbishop cannot seem to reach an agreement even though they’ve had plenty of time to come up with one.  http://byztex.blogspot.com/ 

The fact that the GOA is presently operating without a Charter leaves all of its assets –including its parishes– vulnerable to civil actions but that is a story for another day.

To add insult to injury, our friends at Helleniscope brought to our attention an interview with a former professor of his, Professor Despo Lialiou of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who apparently gave the archbishop an F for intellectual/theological acuity.   https://www.helleniscope.com/2023/04/27/why-does-the-archbishop-provide-proof-of-his-intelligence-ties-now/

We can hardly blame her, as Gail and I reached the same conclusion following his ridiculous foray into marching with Black Lives Matter, the multiple spoon controversy and the notorious gay baptism debacle (among others), but from what Lialiou intimates, barring her from his enthronement back in 2019 and calling her “a decrepit old woman” on top of that, really is stupid.  In fact, he appears to be so irrelevant to his alma mater, that no one else stood up for him or had anything to say about him one way or the other.  

What did Oscar Wilde say?  “There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”  

Well, she’s talking and she has as much to say about Bartholomew as she does about Elpidophoros.  She loves the former.  The latter?  Not so much.  In fact she loves Bartholomew so much, we wonder if he might have put her up to doing this interview after being silent for so many years.  https://www.exapsalmos.gr/i-kathigitria-despo-lialiou-perigrafei-ston-e-k-ton-archiepiskopo-elpidoforo-olokliri-i-synentefksi/

To be truthful, when we read that report on the Charter, we had to wonder why Bartholomew turned on Elpidophoros, who as far as we can tell, has carried major water for him.  Actually, “stunned” would be a more accurate word.  Is it because Bartholomew feels he was let down by all the unnecessary scandals?  Or is it because he felt that Elpidophoros was in the process of betraying him?  (And where in this process can we find the fingerprints of Fr Alex Karloutsos, Bartholomew’s eyes and ears in America?)

This last assertion is a harsh one but I did not arrive at it by grasping at straws.  Consider for example the archbishop’s most recent speaking engagement at the National Intelligence University.  This invitation was a striking turn of events as no Orthodox bishop in America has ever been invited to address this esteemed institution.  https://www.thenationalherald.com/archbishop-addresses-u-s-intelligence-community-at-national-intelligence-university/ 

The American intel community may have had their own reasons for inviting the archbishop, given the failure of their Ukrainian misadventure.  Perhaps he was a prop, an “American” Orthodox bishop, as opposed to those evil Russian bishops who are blessing the Russian expeditionary force in Ukraine.  The old divide-and-conquer strategy so to speak. 

On the other hand, let us look at this from Patriarch Bartholomew’s perspective:  nowhere has his irrelevance been exposed as much as it has by his own Ukrainian gambit.  Not only has his effort to “heal the schism” of the Ukrainian Church failed utterly, he has not been able to bring along all the other local Orthodox Churches.  To put not too fine a point on it, his efforts to highlight his role as the “Eastern Pope” has been exposed as the delusional fraud it always was.  In other words, his usefulness as far as the globalists’ agenda is concerned, has now come to an end. 

Given the precarious position of Bartholomew in Istanbul, he really doesn’t have the latitude to take anything for granted.  Especially since the Turkish political situation is anything but stable; now more so with President Erdogan playing his own double game between NATO and the Kremlin, the consequences of which have not gone unnoticed.  First a major earthquake blamed on the West and now Erdogan suffering a physical setback weeks before an election.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2023/apr/27/serious-stomach-flu-turkeys-president-erdogan-taken-ill-on-live-tv-video

Things are really heating up in Turkey.  After completing multiple rallies, Erdogan hastily exited an American interview due to the “stomach flu.”  For some reason, this caused Putin to make his own hasty trip to the Kremlin. 

Things were so critical that his family was called to the hospital.  Rumors abounded that not only was Erdogan poisoned but perhaps his family was in danger as well. 

None of this speculation is outlandish when you consider that in 2016, elements the Turkish Army staged a coup against Erdogan, from which he was only able to extricate himself with Russia’s help.  The plotters came very close to assassinating Erdogan.  In the aftermath, it was revealed that Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish magnate living in Pennsylvania, had a hand in this.   

Gulen, being a long-time friend of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s, caused many in the Erdogan administration to question the latter’s possible involvement as well.  This nervousness on behalf of the Phanar extended to Russia, especially since it was the Kremlin that pulled Erdogan’s fat out of the fire.  Ever since that day, Russia and Turkey have only grown closer, with disastrous results for NATO. 

As for Gulen?  In 2022, U.S. Senate candidate for Pennsylvania Dr Mehmet Oz said to the Washington Post, “Gulen cannot be touched. There are no credible allegations that he was involved in the coup.  He will stay in Pennsylvania.”

All things being equal, Patriarch Bartholomew has ample reason to fear for his own stability –and not only from Turkey.  It wouldn’t be that hard to imagine a scenario where an up-and-coming metropolitan (to the outside world) could be viewed by Bartholomew as a threat, especially if the State Department viewed him as the asset Bartholomew should have been but failed to be. 

In the final analysis, Bartholomew has a weak hand to play.  If Elpidophoros has turned on him, resurrecting an old academic record and painting it in the worst possible light may have be the last card he has left to protect his throne.  

Although it wouldn’t be the first time Bartholomew has undermined an archbishop of the GOA, it may be the first time an archbishop in the GOA has tried to undermine Bartholomew which is something one must consider given Elpidophoros’ sudden interest in U.S. Intelligence. 

Elpidophoros speaking in front of the the US intelligence community’s premier academic institution, with faculty and students from all 18 agencies of the intelligence community (including the CIA, NSA, FBI, et al) as well as all branches of the US armed forces on Ukraine and Russia defies imagination.   That and someone with purportedly little intellectual acuity writing a book on Russia’s weaponization of religion in the invasion of Ukraine to “deepen the understanding in the US national security community” defies all credible logic.   

There is no question Elpidophoros is grabbing the limelight.  The question becomes how far would Elpidophoros go to move his boss aside and for what reason?   I think we have our answer. . . 

Elpidophoros is Plan B for the State Department.