Orthodox leader celebrates Epiphany in U.S.

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. – The spiritual leader of the world’s 200 million-plus Orthodox Christians celebrated Epiphany with an audience of American followers Friday, commending them for their “steadfastness in maintaining the faith.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I visited this heavily Greek-American community for its 100th annual Epiphany celebration to mark the day that Orthodox Christians believe Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan.

The celebration in Tarpon Springs, a city of 24,000 northwest of Tampa, has become the largest Orthodox Epiphany event in North America.

“We salute you for your steadfastness in maintaining the faith of your ancestral tradition, as well as your love for the beautiful, spiritual, cultural and folk traditions in which you reverently persevere,” Bartholomew said in his liturgy, delivered in Greek.

“Truly it is out of respect and love for the memory of your forebears that you have clung to your ecclesiastical and ancestral customs,” he said.

In the celebration’s hallmark event, more than 50 teenage boys submerged themselves in the chilly Spring Bayou to see who could retrieve a wooden cross that Bartholomew had tossed into the water in a ceremony. Jack Vasilaros, the 16-year-old who emerged with it, got a special blessing from the patriarch.

Today, Bartholomew will travel to New Orleans, where he is to be joined by Roman Catholic Archbishop Alfred Hughes for a visit to flood-damaged areas of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Bartholomew arrived Thursday in Tarpon Springs and announced that Pope Benedict XVI will visit his headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, sometime this year in an effort to heal the ages-old rift between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. The last talks broke off five years ago.