The leader of America's Greek Orthodox Christians said he hoped his historic appointment to the Turkey-based council governing the church would ease an escalating power struggle.
Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was one of six non-Turkish clerics recently appointed to the Holy Synod, based at the Patriarchate in Istanbul and responsible for leading the church and electing future patriarchs.
All 12 seats had been held by Turkish citizens since 1923, when Turkey became a republic.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Demetrios said he hoped his appointment would help improve understanding between the governing council and members of the U.S. Greek church who have been pushing for self-rule.
Last month, prominent U.S. parishioners filed suit asking the New York State Supreme Court to require that the U.S. archdiocese's 1.5 million members obey its own governing charter.
The plaintiffs claimed the church's hierarchy imposed a new governing charter last year without approval from delegates at a U.S. Clergy-Laity Congress, as required.
But Demetrios expressed hope that his appointment could help resolve the dispute.
"Even the people who went to the court they agreed that it (the appointment) was a good step," Demetrios said Tuesday. "They said that we are somehow micromanaged (from Turkey). But now if you have a person of the Archdiocese, the archbishop himself, sitting at the Synod ... then you're not in the same condition."
But George Matsoukas, executive director of Orthodox Christian Laity, which is funding the lawsuit, said Wednesday that Demetrios' appointment would not make a difference.
"It's just another window-dressing by the patriarch," he said. "It does not make the problems in the American church go away."
Demetrios criticized the decision to involve the court and said the American church could be given more power in the future.
"It's a matter of just maturing and progressing," he said.
Demetrios said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I's visit to New York and New Jersey on Saturday will also help smooth relations.
The visit by the the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, "shows again the love and the very special attention that the patriarchate and the patriarch personally pays to this part of the church," he said.
The hierarchy's fragile presence in Turkey is under increasing challenge not only from the U.S. church but also from within this overwhelmingly Muslim country.
Fewer than 3,000 Greeks are estimated to remain in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, which was the capital of the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire. The empire collapsed when the Muslim Ottoman Turks conquered the city in 1453, but the Patriarchate remained.