Held under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the European Commission, the fourth international ecological meeting will be held from 5 to 12 June. This year it will be devoted to the safeguard of the Adriatic Sea. News of the forthcoming event was given to SIR by archimandrite Polykarpos Stavropoulos, vicar general of the Orthodox archdiocese of Italy, during the Consultation promoted in Venice by the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe on “Work and responsibility for the creation”. The Orthodox-sponsored event is expected to be attended by over 250 participants in a “travelling” programme on board a ship that will sail from Durazzo, in Albania, proceed up the Adriatic coastline to Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Ravenna and arrive in Venice on 10 June. In Ravenna the Patriarch will receive an honorary degree for the conservation of the cultural heritage. In the lagoon city, a vespertime liturgy dedicated to the safeguard of the creation will be celebrated in St. Mark’s basilica, while, at a ceremony in the Palazzo Ducale, the Patriarch together with the participants in the meeting will sign a final document on the Adriatic Sea. In previous years, the ecological meeting has been dedicated to the Aegean Sea (1995), the Black Sea (1997) and the river Danube (2000). After the Adriatic, the next meeting will discuss the Baltic Sea. The 11 June the archimandrite recalled is the feast of St. Bartholomew: “The Patriarch he explained has decided to celebrate his name-day in the church of San Giorgio dei Greci in Venice [the Greek Orthodox church] because on 12 June he will leave for Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize for ecology: a new prize that will be awarded to the Patriarch in recognition for his services to ecology”. Thanks to Bartholomew’s initiative, the Orthodox Church will dedicate a special day to the safeguard of the creation on 1st September.
