Department for External Church Relations
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Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia has passed away
DECR Communication Service, 24.08.2022.
Metropolitan Kallistos of Diocleia (born Timothy Ware) has passed away on August 24 at the age of 88 after a prolonged illness.
He was born in the city of Bath (Somerset County, Great Britain) on September the 11th, 1934. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalene College of University of Oxford. Anglican since his birth, he embraced Orthodoxy in 1958. He spent a long time at the Monastery of St. John the Theologian on the island of Patmos in Greece; he also frequented Jerusalem and Mount Athos. In 1966, he was ordained and took monastic vows with the name Kallistos. Since that year year and until his retirement in 2001 he taught Orthodoxy at University of Oxford.
In 1982, he was consecrated as Bishop of Diocleia, auxiliary bishop to the Archbishop of Thyatira and Great Britain (Patriarchate of Constantinople). After his episcopal consecration, he stayed in Oxford to continue heading a Greek Orthodox parish and giving lecture at the university.
After his retirement, His Eminence Kallistos actively continued publishing his studies and delivering lectures on Orthodoxy. On March 30, 2007, he was elevated to the rank of metropolitan.
The best-known book by His Eminence Kallistos The Orthodox Church came out in 1963 even before his ordination and monastic vows. Later, it was republished more than once, also in Russian.
His Eminence Kallistos also translated into English a considerable body of liturgical and theological texts. In cooperation with Sister Mary, he prepared an English version of the Lenten Triodion and Festive Minaion. Together with G. Palmer and F. Sherrard, he translated four of the five volumes of Lovingkindness. He was working to edit the last, fifth, volume of this edition up to his last days. At present this volume is being prepared for publication.
Metropolitan Kallistos took an active part in the inter-Orthodox dialogue. After Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople granted ‘autocephaly’ to the Ukrainian schismatics in January 2019, the hierarch publicly expressed his disagreement with that action.
In the last days of his life, the severely ill hierarch was repeatedly visited by Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary. Metropolitan Kallistos was his PhD supervisor at Oxford University.
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