hierarch

“I had the honor of knowing a hierarch who did not hesitate to directly express his opinion, regardless of whether this would displease his interlocutor or even a section of society,” Anastasiades said.

He was no ordinary scholar, this man, but the apotheosis of scholars: the most famous personage in Zosma, save the queen and the hierarch, and the most popular, bar none.

Those include Bartholomew Samaras, a key confidante of the patriarch; Emmanuel Adamakis, an influential hierarch in the church; and Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, who heads a prestigious seminary on the Turkish island of Halki.

Mr Sachs warmed up for his session with the oil chiefs with an impassioned peroration delivered yesterday on the Greek island of Spetses, at a diverse gathering of environmental scientists, theologians and activists convened by the senior hierarch of the Orthodox church, Patriarch Bartholomew I.

No human, from the greenest convert to the most supreme hierarch, can “lower the bar.”