The "duty" of reconciliation” “

“I think with gratitude of the endeavour of John Paul II, who daily works for the Church, for the world and for dialogue, with all his inner strength and in spite of all the difficulties”. With these words Teoctist, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church welcomed the members of the Joint Committee of the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE) and the Conference of European Churches (KEK), who held their annual meeting at the Patriarchate in Bucharest from 30 January to 1st February – their first meeting for many years to be held in an Orthodox context. The Patriarch’s words were not only a tribute to the bishop of Rome, but the ecumenical witness of two personalities who have taken prophetic steps in dialogue and who by their life recall the “duty” of reconciling all the churches of Europe. If, as was said by Metropolitan Jérémie, president of KEK, the first contribution that the Churches can make to the world is that of practising dialogue and reconciliation among themselves, that does not mean they must shirk their responsibilities in the European and international context. So there was a lengthy discussion at the meeting on the prospects of an armed conflict against Iraq and the role of the Churches in such a situation. Discussion also focused on the tragedy of the Middle East, and on the next stages in the process of the European Union, on the basis of the report on the activities of the “Church and Society” Commission of the KEK and the Commission of the Episcopates of the European Union (COMECE) – both with their headquarters in Brussels, at the heart of the institutions of the EU. At the centre of the debate on the future of Europe was the question of the recognition of the Churches and Christianity in the “constitutional text” that the European Convention is now drafting. The reference to Christianity in the text of the constitutional treaty, said Aldo Giordano, general secretary of the CCEE, ought not to be merely “nominal”, but the key to give content and depth to such concepts as liberty, fraternity, justice, and the dignity of the person. The Committee examined various “laboratories” of dialogue of the Churches of Europe. The Charta Oecumenica is undoubtedly a fundamental contribution to this process. In inviting all Churches to regularly include in their own confessional celebrations the prayer for other Churches and Christian communities, as suggested by the Ecumenical Charter in paragraph 5, the Committee wishes not only to support the Churches in their search for concrete commitments to contextualize the Charter’s suggestions, but also to affirm that the first ecumenical goal of the Churches must be to grow in spiritual communion through prayer, in the consciousness that unity is a gift of God to history. The idea of the synod of the Greek-Catholic Churches, said Cardinal Lubomir Husar, archbishop of Lvov, is the common reading of the Word of God as the way of understanding what God wants of the Churches. Another significant decision taken at the meeting was that of holding a third European ecumenical assembly – after Basel in 1989 and Graz in 1997 – in an Eastern European country of Orthodox tradition, in 2007. If the presence of the countries of Eastern Europe was one of the surprises of the assembly in Graz (the most numerous delegation in fact came from Romania), now the Europe of the Churches, to be able fully to breath with both lungs, has decided to shift its ground to the East, to tackle from a new perspective the challenges of the historical and cultural moment in which Christians are living. The work of preparing the assembly will be begun in the months ahead, after the KEK has renewed its executive in the course of its assembly to be held in Trondheim in June this year. Bishop Amédée Grab, president of the CCEE, thanked the Romanians Catholics, a minority but lively presence, for the warm welcome they had held out to the bishops from the West.