Ecumenical visits and fraternal meetings

The three major occasions in the last few months on which we have been able to gratefully live the great gift of ecumenical visits and fraternal meetings were the international ecumenical conferences

The three major occasions in the last few months on which we have been able to gratefully live the great gift of ecumenical visits and fraternal meetings were the international ecumenical conferences.

First in time, from 18 to 20 May took place the 6th Conference on the spirituality of the Reform, this year on the topic of The Lord’s Supper and the unity of the Churches, a unique occasion for a common theological reflection among the participants on the eucharist. Most of those present were students and professors of the theology departments that together with us organize these conferences: the faculties of Protestant and Catholic theology of Strasbourg, the faculty of Catholic theology of Lyons, the faculties of Protestant theology of Geneva, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel, the faculty of Waldesian theology of Rome.

A few days later, from 31 May to 2 June, the 10th International liturgical conference was held in Bose, organized in collaboration with the National office for the Church’s cultural patrimony of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. This year the conference dealt with the subject of the liturgical adaptation of churches. The numerous participants exchanged views on the relation between liturgy and liturgical space in the light of the liturgical reform of Vatican II.

Three months later, from 5 to 8 September, was held the 20th International ecumenical conference on Orthodox spirituality, organized in collaboration with the Orthodox Churches. We could never have expected that this occasion of fraternal ecumenical encounters would continue regularly for twenty years and that, thanks to the Lord, it might become a time and place of foretasting that unity among the Churches of Christ that, we continue to hope, will come about one day. This year’s theme was Man — custodian of creation. The participants came from numerous parts of the globe. The presence of monks and nuns was especially significant; they came from numerous Orthodox (Greece, Russia, Romania, Mount Sinai, Armenia, France, England, United States) and Catholic and Reformed monasteries (Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary). Present were also eleven Orthodox and six Catholic bishops. There were official delegations from the Catholic Church, from the patriarchate of Constantinople, Antioch, and Moscow, and from the Orthodox Churches of Greece, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, and America, of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Church of England, as well as a representative of the Pontifical Council for the promotion of Christian unity.