Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Receives 2025 Templeton Prize

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of approximately 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians around the world, received the 2025 Templeton Prize at a September 24 ceremony held at the renowned Lincoln Center in New York City.

Over 300 guests attended the event in David Geffen Hall, including a contingent of clergy dressed in their traditional black cassocks, eager to honour one of their own. Several luminaries were also in attendance: the late Dr Jane Goodall (2021 Templeton Prize laureate), Professor Paul Davies (1995 Templeton Prize laureate), the former Vice President Al Gore, and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece.

In April, Bartholomew was named the 2025 Templeton Prize laureate for his pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity's relationship with the natural world, which has brought together people of different faiths to heed a call for stewardship of creation. The Templeton Prize, established in 1972 by Sir John Templeton, honours individuals whose exemplary achievements advance his philanthropic vision: harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind's place and purpose within it.

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