Faculty & Staff

His Eminence Archbishop Makarios (Griniezakis) of Australia, Primate and Exarch of All Oceania, was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1973. He received his early ecclesiastical and theological education at the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School, the Higher Ecclesiastical School, and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He undertook postgraduate studies at Boston University (Master of Sacred Theology), Harvard University (Master of Arts), and Monash University in Australia (Master of Bioethics), while his doctoral dissertation was approved with “highest distinction” by the Medical School of the University of Crete.

In 1993 he was tonsured a monk and joined the brotherhood of the historic Holy Monastery of St George Epanosifis, where he remained until his election as Bishop of Christoupolis in 2015, serving during that period in various senior positions within the Archdiocese of Crete. From 2003 to 2019 he taught at the Patriarchal Academy of Crete and served as a Visiting Professor at several universities in Greece and abroad. He currently holds the position of President and Dean of St Andrew’s Theological College in Sydney. He founded and directs the scholarly series “Pantodapa and Bioethics”, which is under the auspices of the Mother Church of Constantinople. In 2018 the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate appointed him Chairman of its Synodal Committee on Bioethics, and in 2023 he was appointed Chairman of the corresponding Inter-Orthodox Committee. He participated in the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (Crete, 2016) as an advisor to the delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

He has represented the Church of Constantinople in numerous ecclesiastical missions, has been invited to speak in many Metropolises in Greece and abroad, and has delivered lectures at international academic, medical, and theological conferences. He is a member of many academic and ecclesiastical organisations and committees and has published numerous articles, studies, and books.

On 9^th of May 2019, the Holy and Sacred Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, following the favourable proposal of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and having duly assessed his theological and secular education, his literary work, his administrative gifts, his ecclesiastical ethos, and his broader offering to the Church, elected him unanimously Archbishop of the vibrant and particularly significant Archdiocese of Australia. The presence of Archbishop Makarios on the Fifth Continent, by common acknowledgment, imparted a spirit of life and united the Greek Orthodox community. During his first four-year ministry in the Antipodes, he founded schools for the teaching of the Greek language, strengthened St Andrew’s Theological College in Sydney, established soup kitchens, expanded the Archdiocese’s social outreach to the elderly, founded a School of Byzantine Music, ordained eight bishops and more than seventy-five priests and deacons. He initiated an internal mission directed toward Australian citizens, while also creating numerous cultural programs aimed at preserving the Greek heritage. He succeeded in reuniting and strengthening Australia’s bonds with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church Greece, while his public addresses and statements have carried particular weight both for Australia’s political leadership and for society more broadly. He is regarded as one of the significant contemporary theologians and eminent hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, enjoying the esteem of both the wider intellectual world and the theological community.