THIS year’s Templeton Prize, worth £1.1 million, has been awarded to the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople.
The Patriarch is regarded as primus inter pares among the patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. He had won the prize, the Foundation said on Wednesday, “for his pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, bringing together people of different faiths to heed a call for stewardship of creation”.
The President of the John Templeton Foundation, Heather Templeton Dill, said that Patriarch Bartholomew had made “care for the environment a central commitment in his role as a spiritual leader. This is harnessing the power of the sciences to expand our collective understanding of humankind’s place and purpose in the world.”
The Prize, established in 1972 by the investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, honours those who yield new insights into religion and science, making what he called “progress in religion”.
A statement from the Templeton Foundation said that Patriarch Bartholomew had “made history” by declaring that acts that harmed the environment, such as pollution, deforestation, and climate change, were “not just practical missteps but moral failings”. His pastoral teaching had introduced “a new category of sin — ‘ecological sin’ — which has since influenced both religious and secular discourse on environmental ethics.”
The Patriarch said in a statement: “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. . .
“I see that we have a common ideal, a common purpose. Maybe our methods are diverse, but the final goal of all of us is to save our planet, to create better conditions of life for the inhabitants of this planet, which is our common home, our ecos.”
Mother Teresa was the first Prizewinner, 50 years ago. Other winners have included Dame Cicely Saunders (1981), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2013), and the Dalai Lama (2012).