patriarch

{{Christianity}} The highest form of bishop, generally in charge of an ethnic community, but in terms of the pope and the ecumenical patriarch, the former is the Patriarch of the West and the latter is the Patriarch of the East, a division dating to the Emperor Constantine the Great. The cities of Antioch, Alexandria, and almost as an afterthought, Jerusalem are accorded equal historical if not ecclesial dignity. Any and all other patriarchs, particularly that of the Russian church, are inferior.