The American School of Classical Studies at Athens held its annual Gala on the evening of May 8, 2025. The Overseers of the Gennadius Library selected the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople as the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Gennadius Prize.
This highest honor of the Gennadius Library recognizes outstanding contributions to Greek learning and Hellenism.
The Gala, held at Gotham Hall in New York City this year, benefits the School’s mission of preserving, promoting, and protecting all aspects of Greek culture from antiquity to the present.
Attending the event were Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and Metropolitan Apostolos, Geron of Derkon.
In his Remarks to the attendees and supporters of the American School, Archbishop Elpidophoros stated, “The decision of the Overseers of the Gennadius Library to include the Ecumenical Patriarchate in a list of distinguished institutions and persons who have been deemed worthy of the Prize, seems to me a logical conclusion, for such a bastion of Hellenism, as the Library.
Especially as we mark this coming Fall, the completion of thirty-four years of historic and world-changing ministry upon the See of Saint Andrew by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew – the longest serving Archbishop of Constantinople in the two thousand year history of the Christian Church – this occasion of the Gennadius Prize is replete with significations.
First and foremost, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been the guardian and protector of the vast cultural and linguistic legacy of Hellenism throughout the centuries. In whatever empire the Mother Church found Herself, the knowledge of the ages was preserved for the generations to come.
To this day, Greek is the official language of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the legacies of Hellenism in all their variety find expression in the philosophical and theological workings of the Church.”
Photos: Orthodox Observer/Dimitrios Panagos
