GREEK ORTHODOX TO GET NEW LEADER.

Byline: Peter Steinfels The New York Times

A new era for Greek Orthodox Christians in the United States begins today, when Archbishop Spyridon, the first American-born prelate appointed to lead them, is enthroned in New York City.

Although the new archbishop of the United States, who turns 52 Tuesday, was born in Warren, Ohio, and graduated from high school in Tarpon Springs, Fla., he has served his church in Europe for the last three decades and remains a largely unknown quantity to Greek Orthodox here.

But hundreds of priests and thousands of lay faithful are expected to welcome him at the ceremony, to be held at the principal church of the archdiocese, the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on East 74th Street in Manhattan, where he will also be greeted by scores of local and national political figures and by leaders of other Christian churches.

As head of the largest group of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the United States - the Greek Orthodox archdiocese has 550 parishes and estimates its membership at 1.5 million, although active membership may be considerably lower - Spyridon has the daunting task of stepping into the shoes of Archbishop Iakovos, who retired in July after leading the church for 37 years and establishing Orthodoxy as an important force in American religious life.

Spyridon's appointment also comes at a time of complicated crosscurrents and rivalries in Orthodox Christianity, which, freed of Communist repression in Eastern Europe, is rapidly gaining adherents and rebuilding its institutions.

Iakovos' retirement followed a period of tension with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, whose ancient post, in what is now Istanbul, gives him a preeminent-eminent position of honor among all Orthodox Christians as well as direct control over the American church.

Bartholomew promptly named Spyridon, who was metropolitan of Italy, to succeed Iakovos. However much the Greek Orthodox faithful in the United States regretted Iakovos' retirement, they now appear eager to begin afresh with a new leader who, even if long absent from the country, is American-born and -bred.

The new archbishop, born George Papageorgiou, entered the Ecumenical Patriarchate's seminary on the island of Halki, near Istanbul, in 1962. Before that, he had attended elementary school and high school both in the United States and on his father's native Greek island of Rhodes.

When he was ordained a deacon in 1968, he took the name Spyridon, for a fourth-century Cypriot saint, a shepherd who turned his rustic simplicity into holiness and was chosen to be a bishop.

Spyridon later served at the Ecumenical Patriarchate's center near Geneva, where he worked with the World Council of Churches. From 1976 to 1985, he headed the Greek Orthodox parish of St. Andrew in Rome. He was ordained an auxiliary bishop in 1985, and in 1991 was appointed the first head of the newly created archdiocese of Italy.

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Photo: Archbishop Spyridon will be enthroned in New York to day.

The New York Times