The Third European Ecumenical Assembly will open today at 7 pm at Sibiu (Romania) with a public meeting in one of the city squares and will bring together 2,100 official delegates from all the Christian Churches of Europe until 9th September. The event named "The light of Christ enlightens everyone. Hope of renewal and unity in Europe" is jointly promoted by two European bodies: the Ccee, which gathers the 34 European Bishops Conferences, and the Kek (Conference of European Churches), the members of which are 120 Churches of the Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant traditions. The official delegates half of whom have been appointed by the Bishops Conferences, the other half by the Churches that are members of the Kek will be supplemented by 400 guests plus an indefinite number of visitors. The novelty of this Third Assembly will be the presence along with the official delegates of 120 young people aged 18 to 30: 80 come from all over Europe, 40 from Romania. The main speakers include the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, card. Walter Kasper (Vatican), the Orthodox metropolitan bishop Daniel of Iasi (Romania), the Orthodox metropolitan bishop Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad (Russia), the Lutheran dean Margarethe Isberg (Sweden), the Lutheran bishop Wolfgang Huber (Germany), the president of the EU Commission Manuel Barroso, the president of Romania Trajan Basescu.
