DATE: Saturday, October 18, 1997            TAG: 9710180295

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   53 lines

GREEK ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS TO GREET LEADER IN D.C.

A busload of Greek Orthodox Christians will leave early Sunday for an event that many others will not notice but that they consider to have once-in-a-lifetime significance: a visit to the United States by their spiritual leader.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the equivalent of the pope for Orthodox Christians, will arrive in Washington, D.C., on Sunday to begin a monthlong visit that will take him coast to coast.

``This is a great occasion,'' said Father Constantine P. Rogakos of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation on Granby Street in Norfolk. ``It'll be like a family reunion with him. We are very, very thrilled.''

Rogakos will travel to Chicago in early November to meet with the patriarch, so he is not going this weekend. But at least 50 members of his congregation plan to attend a thanksgiving service and a reception with Bartholomew on Sunday.

The patriarch will be in Washington through Thursday. While in the United States, he also will visit New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Des Moines, Los Angeles - and Johnstown, Pa., the heart of a region where many Orthodox Christians live.

Maria Makridakis of Virginia Beach is going to Washington on Sunday with her husband and two children and expects the trip to have profound significance for her family.

``I've never had the opportunity to see him,'' she said. ``I doubt my children will ever have the chance again.

``We've always wanted to travel to Constantinople one day, but this is such a good opportunity because he's going to be so close by.''

Bartholomew, who became the patriarch in 1991, is the spiritual leader of about 300 million people worldwide, including the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches.

In the United States, there are about 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians and about 1 million members of the Orthodox Church in America, primarily of Eastern European descent.

The Orthodox Church, based in ``Constantinople'' - better known as Istanbul, Turkey - was founded in 330 A.D. and is the major counterpart to the Roman Catholic Church. The two branches of Christianity separated in 1054 A.D.

In the United States, some Greek Orthodox Christians find their leader, Archbishop Spyridon, a little too authoritarian and feel that the Eastern European leaders of the church don't fully understand American members. Some hope Bartholomew will address those issues.

But those from Norfolk aren't raising such questions. Makridakis is looking forward to hearing what Bartholomew says, and knowing that her children have heard him.

``It will be an event to deepen everyone's faith, I think,'' she said. ``I am sure he will address us with words of wisdom, words that we will remember later in life.''

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