As I was flicking through the channels some days ago, a blast from the past caught my attention; Jane Hutcheon hosted an interview with Father Themistokli Adamopoulo. I was immediately transfixed by the immediacy, the directness and the sincerity of his responses, even more so by the simplicity, the purity and the honesty of his presence.
Then it all came back to my mind: our long discussions at St Andrews Theological College in Sydney, for over seven years, about life, Christianity, Hellenism, morality and of course Charles Darwin.
I was teaching Byzantine theology there; and conversing with him was an incredibly stimulating and irritating experience. He was trying to prove to me that Darwinism is irreconcilable with Christian beliefs. I confronted him many times. He insisted that “we are made in the image of God”. I objected: “All animals express God’s creative presence in history – and not only animals, but the whole of nature.”
“This is panentheism,” he replied in despair. “This is paganism. You disregard the consequences of the fall.” “You underestimate the significance of the Incarnation,” I retorted.
I usually gave up and let him talk. Yet his extreme innocence, incredible honesty, unassuming truthfulness incited me to engage into long disputations with him, always in good faith while occasionally teasing him, instead of trying to convince him about anything.
Once, in 1999, he went to Melbourne for an operation. We talked on the phone and I promised to send him a book. In a luciferian moment, I sent him a book on Charles Darwin. He later told me that he read part of it and thought that he could see Darwin’s genuine effort to find the truth. “Who knows,” he added pensively. “Probably he was trying to explain the mystery of life, but he took the wrong turn: totally materialistic and empirical, forgetting everything about the spiritual self of humanity.”
Then he left. Our last meeting took place in the corridors of the college. “God has entrusted me with a mission,” he said. “And despite your Darwinism, I hope that you understand the presence of God in us and in history.”
“And if there is no God?” I asked. “It is impossible,” he replied. “We wouldn’t have been here otherwise…” “Where are you going?” I asked. “To Africa,” he replied. “You know that I was born in Africa? Who knows if we will ever see each other again …'” “And what will you do in Africa?” I insisted. “I will put my faith into action,” he replied, and shook my hand.
It was the end of an era: without him, teaching theology and New Testament was a melancholic task. “Don’t trust Darwin’s theories,” he admonished me. “They will misguide you.” And then he added: “But then, all human theories misguide us – we must maintain our faith in human dignity under any circumstances … In my youth I fell into many similar traps myself …”
When I saw him again on the ABC I immediately recognised his immense moral strength, his child-like integrity, his captivating sensitivity. We are usually caught up by negative politics and waste precious time in sterile disputations about consumable celebrities – and we forget to praise decency and goodness. Here is a man who is serving humanity to the best of his abilities, with humility, self-effacement and complete commitment. Even if we don’t accept his faith, we must accept his service to the suffering fellow humans. Even if we don’t agree with the ideas that inspire him, his actual work influences the life of others in a positive and constructive manner, and that’s what really matters. It is the human ethos of Fr Themi that distinguishes him so radically from the well-paid babblers of the journalistic circus.
His work in Africa is a monument of love and humanism: his faith inspires him to serve our fellow humans, particularly those who are not like us, who don’t even have the same faith, or the same values. It is the personal example and unique work that makes Fr Themi such an extraordinary individual in an era of minimal expectations and fake secular gurus.
Like Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa, he manifests his deep reverence for life, his empathic affirmation of the lived experience of humans, by rekindling the spirit of serving and offering. As George Seferis said: “Your life is only what you have given” – and obviously there is a rich and inexhaustible treasure in him.
In his interview, Fr Themi presented in a beautiful and sometimes funny way his own intellectual and spiritual evolution, indeed his own fragility and vulnerability. His arresting self-detachment when he talked about his visual impairment and how it became his way of connecting with the world of the Sierra Leone victims of war was a unique testimony of how certain truly charismatic people transform their problems into solutions that help others to deal with their misfortunes.
Beyond our differences, intellectual and religious, I have the deepest respect and appreciation for him and his work in Africa. He reaffirms the power of the mind against the adversities of nature and the obstacles of history. When, sometime in the future, the true history of Greek Australians will be written, his work will be considered one of its most lasting and significant contributions to the humanistic culture of our era. We are lucky because we have witnessed it.

* Vrasidas Karalis is a professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney and author of The Demons of Athens: Reports from the Great Devastation.