The Greeks have an ancient saying that translates to "Nothing in excess," but the country's government hasn't been able to apply that ancient aphorism to its modern balance sheets.

The prospect of Greece and other European nations defaulting on their ballooning public debts this year sparked fears of a euro collapse. To avoid this fate, the International Monetary Fund and finance ministers from the 16 euro-zone members agreed in May on a nearly $1 trillion bailout package including direct assistance and loan guarantees for ailing countries.

As Greece enacted austerity measures required to receive the funds, citizens protested by rioting in the streets.

Archbishop Demetrios, head of the New York-based Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, was sad to see economic mismanagement cause a near meltdown in his home country.

"The crisis is not only a financial crisis. It's a crisis that goes to attitudes, human attitudes, behavior, the way you think things are in life. We invented the saying and we are the first not to keep it: nothing in excess," the archbishop told GlobalAtlanta in a recent interview in Atlanta.

Despite the turmoil, the 82-year-old native of Thessaloniki, Greece, has first-hand proof that his country can recover from seemingly insurmountable challenges.

"I had the experience of four years of German occupation in World War II, seeing people dying on the streets, and people say, 'Is it possible to restore these things?'" he said.

Greece has proven time and again over thousands of years that the answer is "yes," said the archbishop, the spiritual leader of more than 5 million Greek Orthodox adherents in the U.S.

"These were successive waves of civilization produced in spite of external adverse conditions, most of the time under foreign occupation," he said. "This shows the capacity not only for survival, but for survival and productivity."

The difficulty in turning things around is that it involves changing human behaviors, which is notoriously hard to do, he said.

"But I think that the lesson learned is so strong that it's about time that it will happen," he said.

In the church, attitudes toward money are already beginning to shift. Giving has actually increased during the recession, and young people are turning to the church like never before, the archbishop said.

"The circumstances helped people to sit down and think what is worth in life, and what is not, what is passing and ephemeral and like a dream and what is a real thing," he said.

Archbishop Demetrios visited Atlanta in July for the 40th Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Some 800 priests and lay members from all 540 parishes around the country converged on the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, where their spiritual father presided over the biennial conference that set the church's agenda for the next two years.

This is the second installment of a wide-ranging filmed interview with the Harvard-educated archbishop. In the last segment, he used an iPhone to illustrate spiritual lessons people can learn from the financial crisis.

Watch: Spiritual Lessons From an Archbishop's iPhone

For more information on the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, visit www.goarch.org.

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