Bishop of Diokleia

Consecrated in 1982 as titular Bishop of Diokleia and raised in 2007 to titular Metropolitan of the same see, Kallistos Ware held episcopal office for forty years without ever governing a diocese. This file sets out what the office actually was, what he did with it, the parish work that was the real pastoral center of his life, the honors, and the repose of 24 August 2022.

Tradition: Orthodox (Britain; Ecumenical Patriarchate)

The Consecration of 1982

In 1982 Archimandrite Kallistos Ware was consecrated to the episcopate with the title Bishop of Diokleia, a titular see in Phrygia, serving as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Orthodox Times, 24 August 2022; OrthodoxWiki, “Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia”; Greek Orthodox Community of the Holy Trinity, Oxford). The archdiocese was at that date headed by Archbishop Methodios (Fouyas) of Thyateira and Great Britain, to whom Ware later contributed a study of the Jesus Prayer in St Diadochus of Photike for the Festschrift Aksum–Thyateira.

[Disputed: the exact date of the consecration and the identity of the consecrating hierarchs. The sources consulted uniformly give the year 1982 and the auxiliary role within Thyateira, but none consulted supplies the day, the place, or the names of the consecrating bishops. These should be sought in the archdiocesan record rather than taken from any secondary summary.]

He is very widely described as the first Englishman to be consecrated a bishop in the Orthodox Church since the Great Schism of the eleventh century — a claim made by his own parish, by the standard reference articles, and, notably, even by his sharpest published Orthodox critic (Greek Orthodox Community of the Holy Trinity, Oxford; OrthodoxWiki; Patapios, “A Traditionalist Critique of The Orthodox Church,” Orthodox Tradition XVI, no. 1, 39–72). [Disputed: the "first Englishman since the schism" formula. It is repeated with remarkable consistency across friendly and hostile sources and no counter-example was found; but no primary or archival demonstration of it was located either, and the claim depends on how "Englishman" and "Orthodox bishop" are defined across a millennium. It is reported here as the settled description rather than as a verified fact.]

What a Titular See Is

Diokleia is an ancient see with no living flock. A titular bishop bears its name and its rank but governs nothing; his function is to assist a ruling hierarch. From 1982 until his death Ware was therefore an auxiliary — never a diocesan bishop, never a metropolitan with a metropolis, never the ruling hierarch of the archdiocese he served.

Three consequences follow, and they are the key to reading his later career correctly.

He had no jurisdiction to exercise. He did not ordain a clergy of his own, did not administer parishes, did not sit in the councils where inter-Orthodox jurisdictional disputes are settled. When his opinions on contested questions provoked reaction, no diocese was implicated and no clergy were bound; the reaction was to a teacher who happened to wear a bishop’s panagia.

He had standing without power. The episcopal rank made him a plausible Orthodox representative in international dialogue — a role that requires a bishop — and this is precisely how the Ecumenical Patriarchate used him (see The Ecumenical Work).

The comparison with Sourozh is instructive. Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), the other towering figure of twentieth-century British Orthodoxy, ruled the Moscow Patriarchate’s Diocese of Sourozh for decades. Ware, in the parallel Greek jurisdiction, taught and represented but did not rule. The two men shaped British Orthodoxy in complementary and non-overlapping ways.

The Elevation of 2007

On 30 March 2007 the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate raised the titular see of Diokleia to the rank of a metropolis and Bishop Kallistos to Metropolitan of Diokleia (OrthodoxWiki, “Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia”; Orthodox Times, 24 August 2022). The elevation carried no additional jurisdiction; it was an honor, and it is generally read as the Patriarchate’s recognition of a body of work rather than as a change in his duties.

The consequence for citation is practical and worth stating: works published under his name between 1982 and 2007 are properly “Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia”; from 2007, “Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia”; before 1982, “Archimandrite Kallistos Ware”; and before 1966, “Timothy Ware.” All four forms appear on title pages of works still in print, which is the main reason library catalogues treat him as more than one author.

The Parish

The pastoral heart of Ware’s life was not the episcopate at all. In 1966, on being appointed Spalding Lecturer, he was also charged with establishing the Greek Orthodox parish of the Holy Trinity in Oxford, and he served as its founding priest from 1966 until 2001 (Greek Orthodox Community of the Holy Trinity, Oxford, “Metropolitan Kallistos [1934–2022]”). Thirty-five years in one small community, in the same city as his lectureship, running in parallel with the whole of his academic career: this is the constant that the more spectacular items in his biography tend to obscure.

The parish is now dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation, and Ware served it as priest, and after 1982 as its resident bishop, for the better part of six decades.

Honors

Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism, awarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2017, “for his outstanding contribution to Anglican–Orthodox theological dialogue” (Orthodox Times, 24 August 2022).
Honorary doctorates, including from Lawrence University (2001) and St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (2011), which conferred an honorary Doctor of Divinity (SVOTS, “In Memoriam: Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware]”).
Festschriften: Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West (SVS Press, 2003), published for his seventieth year, and later Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: Studies in Honour of Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia.
An international conference, “Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia (Ware): The Witness of Orthodoxy in the West,” held by the Volos Academy for Theological Studies.

Repose

Metropolitan Kallistos died at home in Oxford in the early hours of 24 August 2022, at the age of 87, after a period of grave illness (Orthodox Times, 24 August 2022; Wikipedia, “Kallistos Ware”). He was buried at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, on 1 September 2022 (Wikipedia, “Kallistos Ware”). [Disputed: his age at death. He was born 11 September 1934 and died 24 August 2022, which makes him 87, seventeen days short of his eighty-eighth birthday; some obituaries, including one from the Orthodox Church in America, print 88. The arithmetic favors 87.]

Tributes came from across the Orthodox world and beyond it. The OCA’s memorial called him “a noted scholar, lecturer and author, and devout and faithful clergyman, a beloved spiritual father” whose “words, spoken and written, made Orthodoxy known to the entire world” (OCA, “In Memoriam: Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia,” 2022). The International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue recorded that he “served the Commission with outstanding theological wisdom and with great joy and humor” (ICAOTD statement, 26 August 2022).

A posthumous memoir, Reminiscences and Recollections, edited by Dimitri Conomos, Graham Speake and Walker Thompson from sessions Conomos recorded with him between 2011 and 2016, was published by St Vladimir’s Seminary Press in 2025.

An Honest Accounting of the Office

It is worth saying plainly what this episcopate was and was not, because both overstatement and understatement are common.

What it was not: he did not lead a jurisdiction, did not found a seminary, did not shape a synod’s policy, and left no administrative legacy. Nothing in the institutional life of British Orthodoxy depends on decisions he made as a bishop.

What it was: forty years of representing the Orthodox Church in the most sustained bilateral dialogue it conducts with any Western communion; thirty-five years of parish priesthood in one place; and — harder to quantify but not to observe — the visible existence of an English Orthodox bishop, at a moment when English-speaking converts had to be persuaded that Orthodoxy was not permanently foreign to them. The two Greeks who told the young Ware in 1958 that he had “returned to” the Church of his fathers had, in his consecration, a certain vindication (Ware, “Strange Yet Familiar,” in The Inner Kingdom, 2000; see The Reception of 1958).

References

Orthodox Times. “Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia fell asleep in the Lord,” 24 August 2022. (Diokleia in Phrygia; auxiliary of Thyateira; elevation 30 March 2007; Lambeth Cross 2017; death.)
OrthodoxWiki. “Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia.” (Consecration 1982; elevation 30 March 2007; the “first Englishman” description.)
Greek Orthodox Community of the Holy Trinity, Oxford. “Metropolitan Kallistos (1934–2022).” (Founding priest 1966–2001; consecration 1982.)
St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. “In Memoriam: Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware).” (Honorary Doctor of Divinity, September 2011.)
Orthodox Church in America. “In Memoriam: Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia,” 2022.
International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue. Statement following the death of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, 26 August 2022.
Wikipedia. “Kallistos Ware.” (Death at Oxford, 24 August 2022; burial at Wolvercote Cemetery, 1 September 2022; honorary doctorates.)
Patapios, Hieromonk. “A Traditionalist Critique of The Orthodox Church.” Orthodox Tradition XVI, no. 1, 39–72. (Repeats the “first Englishman since the Great Schism” description.)
Ware, Kallistos. Reminiscences and Recollections. Ed. Dimitri Conomos, Graham Speake and Walker Thompson. Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2025.
Ware, Kallistos. “Strange Yet Familiar: My Journey to the Orthodox Church.” In The Inner Kingdom. Collected Works, vol. 1. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000, 1–24.