BANGOR — The metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Boston will visit northern Maine’s only Eastern Orthodox church on Wednesday, April 12, nearly six years since his last visit to the 70-year-old St. George Greek Orthodox Church.

His Eminence Metropolitan Methodios, bishop of Boston, will take part in a Presanctified Divine Liturgy at 6:30 p.m. at the church at 90 Sanford St. A Lenten collation or dinner will be held after the service.

The liturgy includes parts of the Vesper Service and Prayers of the Catechumens, from the Liturgy of the Faithful, the Very Rev. Peter C. Chrisafideis, pastor at St. George, said. It is called a presanctified liturgy because the Holy Gifts, the bread and wine used for Communion, will be consecrated on the previous Sunday, the priest said.

The diocese that Metropolitan Methodios heads includes Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the Connecticut towns of Danielson, Enfield, New London and Norwich. From the diocesan offices in Brookline, Mass., the metropolitan is spiritual leader to 63 parishes and 200,000 Greek Orthodox faithful.

On April 8, the metropolitan will celebrate his 16th year as bishop of the Boston Diocese. He was elected in 1984 by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Phanar, Istanbul, Turkey. Five years later, Bishop Methodios assumed the presidency of Hellenic College and Holy Gross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. In 1997, the Holy Synod elevated him to the office of metropolitan.

“We must witness to what we believe,” Metropolitan Methodios has said, “but that should not separate us from those who disagree. We should concentrate more on those things that united us and let the Holy Spirit guide us in issues that separate us.”

His fellow clergy call Metropolitan Methodios an ecumenical man with an open heart and mind. He is a member of the National Orthodox-Roman Catholic Consultations Board, the executive board of the National Council of Churches, the Massachusetts Commission on Christian Unity, and the New England Consultation of Church Leaders.

As a member of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, devoted to worldwide religious freedom for all, Metropolitan Methodios traveled to Hungary in 1981, and he visited the Soviet Union in 1982 and 1984 as part of a three-man religious delegation working to ease government restrictions on worship.

Born in 1946 in New York City, the third child of the late Stavroula and Vasilios Tournas, he is a graduate of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral Parochial School in New York City and McBurney School in Manhattan. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Hellenic College in Brookline in 1968 and a bachelor of divinity degree from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 1971.

The next year, he earned a master’s degree of sacred theology from Boston University, and in 1975, the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, awarded him theological accreditation after studies there. Boston University awarded Metropolitan Methodios an honorary doctor of divinity degree in 1985, and a decade later, the American International College in Springfield, Mass., awarded him an honorary degree of humane letters.

For more information on the metropolitan’s visit, call St. George Church at 945-9588.