Welcome Address by Heather Templeton Dill

Welcome address by Heather Templeton Dill at the 2025 Templeton Prize Ceremony in New York City, September 24, 2025

Your All-Holiness, Your Excellency Archbishop Elpidophoros, Father John Jenkins, Bishop Sean Rowe, members of the Patriarchate delegation, former Templeton Prize laureates who are joining us this evening Dame Jane Morris Goodall and Professor Paul Davies, (add other esteemed guests), and Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 2025 Templeton Prize Ceremony.

My name is Heather Templeton Dill. I am the former president of the John Templeton Foundation and granddaughter of Sir John Templeton, the creator and benefactor of the Templeton Prize. On behalf of the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Templeton Religion Trust, we are deeply honored by your presence here this evening to recognize and honor His All-Holiness Bartholomew as the 2025 Templeton Prize Laureate.

The Templeton Prize was established in 1972. The Prize honors individuals whose exemplary achievements harness the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it. It is an award given to those whose research, scholarship, or thought leadership have tapped the scientific enterprise to reveal insights about humankind’s quest for purpose and meaning. The Prize recognizes those who have dedicated a significant portion of their career or vocation to these efforts.

Tonight, we honor a visionary, a thought leader, and the first Orthodox cleric to receive the Templeton Prize. Bartholomew is only the second Orthodox Christian to be awarded the Templeton Prize. The first was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who received the Templeton Prize in 1983. We are deeply honored that Alexander Solzhenitzyn’s son, daughter-in-law and grandson are here with this evening.

We now count the Orthodox Christian communities as among those whose leaders have been recognized by the Templeton Prize. Other prominent religious leaders receiving the Prize include The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.

Templeton Prize laureates come from different fields of research, different areas of the world, different perspectives and different faith traditions. But they share a curiosity about the natural world that knits together a deep spiritual understanding of humankind’s place and purpose in this world with insights from the sciences.

The 2021 Templeton Prize laureate, Jane Goodall, who altered our understanding of animal intelligence came to see how scientific and spiritual perspectives are woven together in a remarkable tapestry of physical existence. You need all these threads – the spiritual and the scientific – to see a full picture of reality.

The Dalai Lama leveraged science to explore compassion, specifically whether compassion could be trained or taught as a means to bring healing and unification to some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu tested the bounds of forgiveness through his leadership of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission which sought restitution through confession and requests for forgiveness and mercy. Years of research have followed this remarkable effort to heal a nation divided by prejudice and violence.

His All-Holiness Bartholomew has used his position as the leader of more than 300 million Orthodox Christians around the world to leverage the insights of science and the wisdom of religion to demonstrate one of the great realities of humankind’s place and purpose in the universe. We are stewards of God’s creation who are responsible for taking care of the natural world and thereby caring for all people no matter where they make their home. Environmental concerns are scientific; they are political. But most of all, His All-Holiness has prioritized helping the world (and especially people of faith) to see care for the environment as “primarily a spiritual issue.”

His All-Holiness’s commitment to the environment stems back to the early days of his appointment as the Ecumenical Patriarch. Building on and expanding the work of his predecessor, Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios, Bartholomew made care for the environment a primary concern of his tenure as one of the world’s most important and visible religious leaders. He tapped the expertise of scientists, developed a theological framework for encouraging care for the environment and communicated frequently about the problems of environmental degradation and humankind’s responsibility to address it.

He knew intuitively that scientists and faith leaders (including but not limited to the Orthodox communities) must come together to discuss the challenges and develop solutions. Scientists would help faith leaders understand the extent of environmental destruction and the opportunity to make changes that would contribute to environmental sustainability. Bartholomew could bring insights from the Bible and other religious teachings to help bishops, priests and other leaders understand that caring for the environment was essential to caring for the poor, the hungry, the displaced. In this way, Bartholomew connected insights from science and religion. “Both are necessary,” he said in 1993, “for a proper evaluation and appreciation of the ecological crisis.”

And thus he built a movement among people of faith. Bartholomew followed the example of Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios and incorporated a call to care for the environment in his annual encyclicals marking the start of the Orthodox Church year. He hosted conferences at the Phanar and in many locations around the world to enrich and expand conversations about the environmental crisis and how and why to address it. The first of these conferences titled “Living in the Creation of the Lord” captured the call upon religious communities. We live in world created by God. The earth and seas are given to us to steward. We must return this gift to God without blemish or harm.

Other conferences bore names that posed a call to action, “Environment and Religious Education,” “Environment and Ethics,” “Environment and Communications.” In 1994, Bartholomew began to invite leaders of other Christian traditions to participate in these conferences on the environment which led to the Venice Delegation in 2002, a statement on environmental ethics signed by the Ecumenical Patriarch and Pope John Paul II. It was a powerful engagement of religious leaders from different Christian sects and demonstrates another a hallmark of Bartholomew’s leadership, inter and intra-faith bridgebuilding. At a North Sea Symposium in 2002, Bartholomew said, “Ministers, politicians, scientists, media and every member of public and civic life are required to look to and work with each other for answers. Together, we can hope and pray for healing in the world. Alone, we can only wound and worsen the situation.” For all these efforts in the first decade of his ministry as Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew received the Sophie Prize.

He attracted the attention of world leaders who also cared deeply about the future of our planet. We will hear from two of them, Jane Goodall and Al Gore, this evening.

The Templeton Prize was first called the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion to recognize those rare and extraordinary individuals who increased humankind’s understanding and love of God through their work. Sir John Templeton hoped the Prize would engender a deeper spiritual awareness among the peoples of this earth and, as he described it in the first brochure for the Templeton Prize, “a greater emphasis on the kind dedication that brings the human life more into concert with the divine will.” Sir John Templeton also hoped that a Prize given to someone who has achieved so much over their lifetime would inspire and uplift future generations to carry on the vision of the Laureate or to carve their own path for spiritual growth and development.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Bartholomew reminds us that the environmental crisis is “primarily a spiritual issue…it directly affects all of us in the most personal and most tangible manner.” But, as he said in 2009 at the Brookings Institution, “it is not too late. God’s world has incredible healing powers. Within a single generation, we could steer the earth toward our children’s future. Let that generation start now.”

His All-Holiness Bartholomew is receiving the Templeton Prize for his pioneering efforts to bridge scientific and spiritual understandings of humanity’s relationship with the natural world and to help people of different faiths heed a call for stewardship of creation. May his vision and mission inspire us this evening and for many years to come.

To reflect further on Bartholomew’s remarkable contributions, we are honored to have Dr. Jane Goodall Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI), UN Messenger of Peace, and 2021 Templeton Prize laureate here this evening. Jane is a passionate advocate for the environment and all who inhabit it including our animal and plant friends. If anyone understands His All-Holiness’s commitment to this work, it is Jane.

Before she speaks, we are delighted to share for the first time ever a short video called Stewards of Creation.