Welcoming Remarks By Archbishop Demetrios of America

Religion, Science and Environment Symposium "The Great Mississippi River: Restoring Balance"
New Orleans, LA
October 21, 2009

Your All Holiness,

Honorable Members of the Eighth Symposium on Religion, Science and the Environment,
Distinguished Guests,

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and its local Metropolis of Atlanta welcome you here in New Orleans by the great Mississippi River.  We welcome you to a Symposium which aims at contributing to the restoration of balance in an area ecologically wounded.

The place of the Symposium is internationally known as one of the most characteristic areas for ecological issues.  New Orleans is a wounded city that suffered the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, a catastrophic event of huge proportions. Since then, there has been a steady recuperation, but there is a long way to go until a full recovery is reached from the trauma inflicted by natural and human forces upon the environment, human habitat and people of this region.

And then, there is another wounded entity:  The Great Mississippi River itself.  This glorious river through the years has become heavily polluted causing  grave damage to both the land and the Gulf far beyond its basin.  Here again there is a concerted effort to reverse the damaging course of pollution and return to the pristine clarity of the waters, but restoration is not easy. 

We are in this wounded city, New Orleans, and in an equally wounded River, the mighty Mississippi.  And we are here to contribute, as much as it is possible, to the healing of both.

The present Eighth Symposium constitutes a significant continuation to the seven Symposia that preceded it.   It is a blessing from God, the Creator of the Universe, that the participants in the Symposia are people like you, dedicated responsibly and effectively to the work of ecological restoration and balance. It is a particular blessing from God Who assigned to us human beings the guardianship of nature, to have the inspiring, loving and wise leadership of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for all these Symposia.   He is the brilliant spiritual leader of a most important movement related to ecological issues and as a result he has received various appropriate names.  But today we clearly see him as the Healer Patriarch who laboriously, incessantly, and deliberately serves in an extraordinary way the ecological healing process and tends to the wounds inflicted upon nature by human beings.

If the peacemakers are blessed, and if those who work for establishing justice and truth are blessed, then all those who work for restoring balance in the natural world,  for trying to return the wounded nature to its initial health, purity and beauty certainly are more than equally blessed by God and by the people.

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