THIS yr’s Templeton Prize, value £1.1 million, has been awarded to the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew of Constantinople.
The Patriarch is thought to be primus inter pares among the many 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 various 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 “take care of the environment a central commitment in his role as a spiritual leader. This is harnessing the facility of the sciences to expand our collective understanding of humankind’s place and purpose on the planet.”
The Prize, established in 1972 by the investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, honours those that yield recent insights into religion and science, making what he called “progress in religion”.
A press release from the Templeton Foundation said that Patriarch Bartholomew had “made history” by declaring that acts that harmed the environment, similar to pollution, deforestation, and climate change, were “not only practical missteps but moral failings”. His pastoral teaching had introduced “a recent category of sin — ‘ecological sin’ — which has since influenced each religious and secular discourse on environmental ethics.”
The Patriarch said in a press release: “Ecology will not be a political or economic issue. It is principally a spiritual and spiritual issue because God created and gave it to us to guard it, to cultivate it, to make use of it, but to not abuse it. . .
“I see that we have now a standard ideal, a standard purpose. Maybe our methods are diverse, but the ultimate goal of all of us is to avoid wasting our planet, to create higher conditions of life for the inhabitants of this planet, which is our common home, our ecos.”
Mother Teresa was the primary Prizewinner, 50 years ago. Other winners have included Dame Cicely Saunders (1981), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (2013), and the Dalai Lama (2012).
