The unforgettable Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon (1913-1989)

This article is devoted to the figure of Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon (1913-1989), one of the great bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the twentieth century. Michel Stavrou offers a documented biographical and theological study, tracing the journey of a prelate committed to promoting pan-Orthodox unity and ecumenical dialogue. The central idea is that Meliton of Chalcedon embodied, in a context of Turkish political pressures and Greek ecclesiastical hostilities, an open ecclesiological vision grounded in the Gospel rather than in institutional conformism. The article makes a twofold contribution: it restores the decisive historical role of this metropolitan in the rapprochement between Rome and Constantinople, particularly during the symbolic meeting with Paul VI in 1975, and it sheds light on the structural tensions that ran through Orthodoxy in the face of the ecumenical challenges of the last century.