Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, has been awarded the 2025 Templeton Prize for his pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, bringing together people of different faiths to heed a call for stewardship of creation.

For over 30 years, Bartholomew has articulated a compelling moral and theological vision of humanity’s responsibility to care for the Earth and to uphold harmony, unity, and mutual love within and across religious communities. He has consistently exhorted people of faith to view their relationship to creation as a sacred duty, arguing that making a false historical divide between the material and spiritual can deny the significance of environmental degradation.