The US political scientist was probably the most unlikely Council participant
In the sea of long black robes and white beards at last week’s
Orthodox Council in Crete, there was “a thimbleful of women” present to
remind the male delegates there of the real world outside their
closed-door conference. There were only three of them among the 290
participants and two were nuns (from Greece and Albania).
And then there was probably the most unlikely participant of them
all. Elizabeth Prodromou, an American of Greek Cypriot heritage, is a
university professor, former diplomat, wife, mother and member of the
parish council at her church in Boston. She has a PhD in political
science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and no
formal theological training.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who championed Orthodoxy’s first
such council in 1,200 as a way to respond to the challenges of the
modern world, included her in his delegation. “I would wish I were not
part of a thimbleful, but instead there were an ocean of us,” Prodromou
told The Tablet between sessions of the Council in Kolymbari in western
Crete.