From Lourdes, France, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew delivered a major address to the General Assembly of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of France, urging Christians to face today’s intertwined spiritual, social, and ecological crises with humility, cooperation, and renewed commitment to unity. He also spoke plainly about the war in Ukraine and the Orthodox Church’s response.
The Patriarch began by recalling his first visit to Lourdes in 1995 and the long arc of Catholic–Orthodox rapprochement, invoking the hopes of his predecessors and the abiding guidance of the Theotokos. Lourdes, he noted, reminds believers that God “works wonders” among the humble and the overlooked, reconciling body and soul and renewing hope amidst the “materialism, positivism, and atheism” that marked earlier eras and still echo today. 
Care for creation and faith–science cooperation
Bartholomew renewed his decades-long appeal for environmental repentance and action, linking the September 1 Day of Prayer for Creation to the wider Christian duty to heal a “wounded” world. He warned against pitting religion and science against one another: grace “penetrates all creation,” so believers and scientists are, in different languages, reading “the same book”—God’s wisdom inscribed in the world. He decried conspiracy thinking and spiritualized denialism during the pandemic and climate debates, calling such attitudes “spiritual blindness,” and urged a return to ascetic sobriety, patience, and the “joy of renunciation” over consumer excess.
Catholic–Orthodox friendship and the road to unity
Citing Vatican II and the 1965 mutual lifting of the 1054 anathemas, the Patriarch praised France’s distinctive theological witness and the figures who advanced East–West dialogue, such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac. True tradition, he stressed, is “not conservative but creative,” translating the perennial faith “into the here and now,” and the path forward requires forgiveness, patient dialogue, and lived charity.
Warning against ethnophyletism—and a clear word on Ukraine
Turning to the politicization of religion, Bartholomew condemned ethnophyletism—the sacralization of ethnicity—as a “modern heresy” already rejected by the 1872 Council of Constantinople. He then addressed Ukraine directly: “We ourselves, exercising the prerogatives of primacy that belong to us canonically and historically, granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, thus ensuring for the faithful of that country the flourishing of their Christian life in freedom of conscience, confession, and expression.”
He condemned Russia’s war: by “aggressing Kyiv,” Moscow has forged a “new alliance between throne and altar” that is “fundamentally contrary to the Gospel and to Orthodoxy,” dragging a pious nation “into an abyss of impiety.” “By attacking Kyiv, Moscow has, in its own words, launched a “crusade” that unites temporal and spiritual powers in an unjust war of senseless cruelty — a war that, tragically, drags Russia, a nation once deeply pious, into an abyss of impiety,” he said.
And he added: “This new alliance between throne and altar is fundamentally contrary to the Gospel and to Orthodoxy. The tragedy of Ukrainian women and children, who daily endure a torrent of bombs and missiles, is also our tragedy.
We therefore see as a sign of moral awakening the fact that — like the Ecumenical Patriarchate — the State, the Church, and public opinion in France recognize that what is at stake here is the future of Europe, its integrity not only territorial but also moral.”
Interreligious dialogue and the cure for modern nihilism
Quoting Nostra aetate and the 2016 Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (Crete), Bartholomew reaffirmed frank interreligious dialogue as a path toward “mutual trust,” reconciliation, and the “peace from above,” achieved not by arms but by love “that does not seek its own.” Against the “double nihilism” of dissolving and artificially reconstructing identities, he urged Christians to refuse the ghettoization of the faith and to rekindle apostolic outreach.
Hope in the next generation
Finally, the Patriarch turned to youth—the “living present” of the Church—whose faith, energy, and service show that the Gospel still bears fruit. He urged pastors to “pray, listen, and guide” young people, so their hope becomes an instrument of spiritual renewal and unity. Drawing again from Lourdes, he echoed the Virgin’s call to “penitence” and prayer, asking for discernment, patience, and humility to be authentic witnesses of the crucified and risen Christ “for the life of the world.”
Watch the Ecumenical Patriarch’s address in French:
