Archbishop Iakovos of America - Biography

Biography

Born on the island of Imvros, Ottoman Empire on July 29, 1911 to Maria and Athanasios Coucouzis, he had two sisters Virginia and Chrysanthi and a brother Panagiotis. He enrolled at age 15 in the Ecumenical Patriarchal Theological School of Halki. After graduating with high honors, Demetrios Coucouzis was ordained deacon in 1934, taking the ecclesiastical name Iakovos. Five years after his ordination, Deacon Iakovos received an invitation to serve as Archdeacon to the late Archbishop Athenagoras, the Primate of North and South America, who later (1949–72) became Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

Ordained a priest in 1940 in Lowell, Massachusetts, he served at St. George Church, Hartford, Connecticut, while teaching and serving as assistant dean of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological School, then in Pomfret, Connecticut and now in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1941, he was named Preacher at Holy Trinity Cathedral in New York City and in the summer of 1942 served as temporary Dean of St. Nicholas Church in St. Louis, Missouri. He was appointed Dean of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Boston in 1942 and remained there until 1954. In 1945 he earned a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from Harvard University.

In 1954, he was ordained Bishop of Melita, by his spiritual father and mentor, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, for whom he served four years as personal representative of the Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches in Geneva. On February 14, 1959, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate elected Iakovos as successor to Archbishop Michael, who died July 15, 1958, as primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. He was enthroned April 1, 1959 at Holy Trinity Cathedral, assuming responsibility for what has grown to over 500 parishes in the United States.

In addition to his duties as primate, Archbishop Iakovos was Exarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; president of the board of education of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America; founder and chairman of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA); chairman of the Orthodox-Roman Catholic Consultation in the USA, and of the Bishops' Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs; honorary board of the Advisory Council on Religious Rights in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

A supporter of civil rights, Archbishop Iakovos was one of the few prominent non-African American clergymen who had the courage to walk hand in hand with Martin Luther King Jr. during the famous march in Selma, Alabama. A picture of this historic moment, with Archbishop Iakovos to the right of Martin Luther King Jr., was captured on the cover of Life Magazine on March 26, 1965.

Iakovos also became the first Greek Orthodox archbishop to meet with a Roman Catholic Pope in 350 years when he met Pope John XXIII in 1959.

He spent nine years on the World Council of Churches and met with every U.S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

Iakovos came into conflict with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I after he supported a move by 29 bishops towards the administrative unification of Eastern Orthodox churches in America. It is widely believed that this clash forced him to resign in 1996.

Archbishop Iakovos, died on April 10, 2005 at Stamford Hospital, Connecticut, from a pulmonary ailment. He was buried on April 15 in the grounds of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts.