Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy Richard Ware) was born on 11 September 1934 in Bath, England. Educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford (where he took a double first in Classics and read Theology), he converted from Anglicanism to Eastern Orthodoxy on 14 April 1958. Soon afterward, he spent six months at a Russian Orthodox monastery in Canada and then became a monk at the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in Patmos, Greece, taking the name “Kallistos.” In 1966 he was ordained to the Orthodox priesthood and simultaneously appointed Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford, a post he held until 2001.

Throughout his academic career, he combined teaching and parish ministry: in 1970 he became a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and in 1982 was consecrated as Bishop of Diokleia (Phrygia) under the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. In March 2007, the Holy Synod elevated Diokleia to a titular metropolitan see, making him Metropolitan Kallistos. He chaired the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge) and participated in numerous ecumenical initiatives, for which—in 2017—he received the Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Kallistos Ware’s writings introduced Eastern Orthodox theology to the English-speaking world. His landmark book The Orthodox Church (first published 1963, with multiple revised editions) remains a primary reference, and its companion volume The Orthodox Way (1979) further expounded Orthodox spirituality. He co-translated the five-volume Philokalia (with G. E. H. Palmer and Philip Sherrard) and produced English editions of key liturgical texts (the Lenten Triodion and Festal Menaion). He continued lecturing and writing until his death at home in Oxford on 24 August 2022, leaving behind a legacy as one of the best-known modern Orthodox hierarchs and theologians.

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• Co-translated the five-volume Philokalia (with G. E. H. Palmer and Philip Sherrard) and produced English editions of the Lenten Triodion and Festal Menaion.
• Chaired the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge) and served on ecumenical bodies, earning the Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2017.
• Continued lecturing, writing, and translating until his death in Oxford on 24 August 2022, widely regarded as the leading modern English-language Eastern Orthodox hierarch and theologian.