The Academy of Athens is an institution of the highest mission and importance in our time. It unites the great spiritual forces that it contains so that her voice and contribution can be felt in the modern world, and with the prestige she possesses, she can essentially influence the course of events. Metropolitan John Zizioulas became a regular member of the Academy in 1993, and he became its vice president in 2001.

Metropolitan John Zizioulas became President of the Academy in 2002 for one year. Thus, for the first time in the history of this highest spiritual institution of Greece, a cleric was found in its leadership.

As a member of the Academy, Zizioulas was involved in different issues, including language, science, ecology, the question of law, etc. On the occasion of Judges’ Day (a Greek holiday in honor of that profession), Zizioulas chose the topic “Law and Personhood in Orthodox Theology” for a prestigious lecture at the Academy of Athens, celebrating the anniversary of the establishment of St. Dionysius Areopagite as protector of the court.

Metropolitan John participated in the meetings of the Academy of Athens and in the events organized by the Academy every December, awarding prizes and praises to association persons, scientists, and writers, as well as citizens who demonstrated altruism and self-sacrifice saving fellow human beings.

January 11, 2002, in the presence of the President of the Republic, Mr. Kostis Stephanopoulos, on Thursday evening, during a public session, the installation of the new President of the Academy of Athens, Metropolitan of Pergamon, and the vice president, Grigorios Skalkeas, took place. That day they were brought, for the first time in the history of the Academy, a clergyman and metropolitan to its presidency.

During the ceremony, in which the new President received the “great honor” of the Academy from his predecessor Professor Nikolaos Konomis, John Zizioulas also explained how he perceives both the modern reality and the voice he should have the Academy as the highest institution of our country in hot and contemporary problems that interest every intellectual institution. “The assumption of the presidency of the highest intellectual institution of our country at the beginning of the crucial millennium for humanity, which we are already passing through, weighs on the conscience of the one who undertakes this high function with the awareness of special responsibility.” Relations between science and theology seek today more than ever close cooperation, in his opinion, which is why the Academy has to unite the great intellectual forces it has and amplify its voice. Protection of man as a free being from the achievements of science and technology with the moral dilemmas they raise, protection of the natural environment and problems specifically related to Greek culture and the identity of Greeks need, as he emphasized, the study and answers of the Academy. 

The problems concerning Greek culture and the identity of the Greeks are linked, as the new President of the Athens Academy pointed out, to the full integration of Greece into Europe and are focused on religious life, culture, and the Greek language. Referring to the long tradition of Orthodoxy, he explained the creation of an anti-Western mentality among the Orthodox that led to the perception that Orthodoxy is our own East and therefore constitutes a foreign space in the Western world, thus making the Orthodox Church a brake on the cultural integration of Greece into the European space. Indeed, he emphasized, it is heard today by many that the church does not understand the demands of history and insists on anchoring us in the past.

The Academy of Athens, he said, has the possibility to include in its programs specifically the research of the Hellenism-Orthodoxy-West relationship. At the same time, it intends to encourage and reward any related research and writing efforts. But Europe also poses risks for the Greek language, Metropolitan John stressed, explaining that there is a visible risk of being led to a monolingual wilderness, which would be disastrous for Europe. That is why the Academy of Athens, as he pointed out, will continue to monitor and be interested in the Greek language. The effort to complete the Dictionary of the Greek Language will continue.

After his repose, the Academy lowered a guard on the pole of the spire three days from the announcement of his repose.