Thousands attend funeral for leader of American Greek Orthodox Church

New York, USA - Archbishop Iakovos, whose more than three-decade leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America was akin to Pope John Paul II's role for Roman Catholics, was celebrated Thursday at a funeral attended by the highest prelates of his archdiocese.

Thousands of faithful packed into the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The body of the 93-year-old Turkish born archbishop, wearing gold and white vestments in an open wooden coffin, was surrounded by four guards in traditional Greek costume. The coffin was placed before the altar as prayers chanted in Greek opened the two-hour service.

Iakovos, who died Sunday from a pulmonary ailment, was to be buried Friday morning on the grounds of the Holy Cross Chapel in Brookline, Mass.

"I see myself smiling up from my coffin at my well-wishers, thanking them for their generosity but urging them gently to be a little more honest," Iakovos wrote in a 1988 autobiography, "Faith for a Lifetime: A Spiritual Journey." "I can almost hear God chuckling as he listens to the unqualified praises showered upon a person who was far from perfect."

Iakovos headed the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, with an estimated 2 million followers, from 1959 until 1996. He was apparently forced into retirement over his support for the idea of uniting the various Eastern Orthodox branches into a single American church.

He met with Pope John XXIII after his 1959 enthronement, becoming the first Greek Orthodox archbishop in 350 years to meet with a Roman Catholic pope, and spent nine years as a president of the World Council of Churches.

Iakovos marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., in 1965 and received the Medal of Freedom from President Carter in 1980.

"Ecumenism," he said in 1960, "is the hope for international understanding, for humanitarian allegiance, for true peace based on justice and dignity, and for God's continued presence and involvement in modern history."

During his long tenure as archbishop, Iakovos led the Greek Orthodox church out of immigrant isolation and into the mainstream of American religious life, playing a leading role in bringing English into the liturgy.

Iakovos started a youth movement in the United States and created the Ionian Village in Greece, a summer camp that has been visited by more than 16,000 Greek-American children.

Iakovos was instrumental in setting up dialogues between Orthodox churches and Anglicans, Lutherans, Southern Baptists and other denominations. He met every U.S. president from Eisenhower through Clinton, and was one of the U.S. Christian leaders who met with Pope John Paul II in a historic gathering in South Carolina in 1987.

He sought to maintain Orthodox traditions such as opposing the ordination of women, while at the same time championing human rights and improved race relations.

Iakovos was born Demetrios Coucouzis in 1911 on the island of Imvros, Turkey. He earned a master's degree at the Ecumenical Patriarch's Theological School in Istanbul in 1934. He took the name Iakovos, which means James, when he was ordained a deacon in 1934.

Arriving in the United States in 1939, he was ordained to the priesthood in Lowell, Mass., in 1940 and earned a second master's degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1945. He became a U.S. citizen in 1950.

Iakovos is survived by a niece in Canada and other relatives in Greece.