“The freedom of Bossey permits people to tackle in an open and constructive way some of the most painful questions debated by the Churches and religious communities and this, in our time, is really necessary”, said pastor Konrad Raiser, former general secretary of the WCC (World Council of Churches), in an address celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey (France). Raiser considers Bossey “a privileged place in spite of the divisions in Church and society” and “a unique international centre of its kind for Christian teaching, formation and dialogue”. Founded in 1946 by the first WCC general secretary, pastor Willem Visser’t Hooft, as a “place of healing in a Europe torn by war”, and frequented at the outset by many concentration camp survivors, former soldiers and members of the resistance movements, the Institute has welcomed in recent days a group of some forty young adults who hold responsible positions in the various Churches. Coming from many countries, and all of them graduates, they will take an intensive five-month course at Bossey as part of a post-graduate university curriculum of ecumenical studies. Bossey is in fact a recognized academic institution, linked to the University of Geneva. According to pastor Tegwende Kinda, of the Reformed Church of Burkina-Faso “the opportunity provided here may help to deepen my theological culture and reinforce the conception of dialogue that is indispensable in a country with a Muslim majority where misunderstandings between the Church and the other religions too easily arise”. “At Bossey students learn 24 hours a day, but the most important part of the ecumenical formation is spiritual life”, says the Institute’s Director, Father Ioan Sauca, a Romanian Orthodox theologian and former pupil of the Institute. Apart from formal theoretical teaching, in fact, the students participate in a shared life of prayer. “For me – concludes the Anglican Anna Eltringham, -, prejudices can be overcome here and the sense of belonging to the body of Christ in the world discovered”.
