His Excellency Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia passed away on 24 August 2022, at the age of 87 years. He was an internationally renowned theologian and scholar of Orthodoxy and had great experience of ecumenism.

Metropolitan Kallistos was born Timothy Richard Ware on 11 September 1934 in Bath (England). He was educated at at Westminster School in London and Magdalen College in Oxford. He embraced the Orthodox Christian faith in 1958. He became an Orthodox monk at the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in Patmos, Greece. In 1966, he was tonsured as a monk and ordained to the priesthood within the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The same year, he became Spalding Lecturer at the University of Oxford in Eastern Orthodox studies, a position he held for 35 years until his retirement. In 1982, he was elected bishop of Diokleia as auxilary of the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. In 2007, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate elevated him titular metropolitan of Diokleia.

In addition to his pastoral and academic duties, Metropolitan Kallistos served as Co-Chair of the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue from 2009 until 2016. He was also a member of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. He served these Commissions with outstanding theological wisdom and with great joy and humour. He made an important contribution to the Ravenna Document published in 2007 by the Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, as well to the Agreed Statement ‘In The Image and Likeness of God: A Hope-Filled Anthropology’ published in 2015 by the Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue.

Metropolitan Kallistos was a prolific author and lecturer. Among his numerous books and articles, his best sellers are The Orthodox Church, first published in 1963, and The Orthodox Way, first published in 1979. He has collaborated in the English translation of the Philokalia (four volumes of five published as of 2018) and of Orthodox liturgical texts.