"There are several challenges to be faced to introduce an ecumenical commemoration of the witnesses of faith". This was stated by Tamara Grzdelidze of the "Faith and Constitution" Commission of the Ecumenical Council of the Churches" (Cec), during the international symposium called "A cloud of witnesses: opportunities for an ecumenical commemoration", which is in progress at the monastery of Bose (until November 2nd). One of these "concerns the difference between traditions, in the role given to witnesses. In some of them, saints or witnesses are invoked in prayers; others have developed different ways of commemorating them". The other challenge consists in "trying not to create an alternative, fixed list of witnesses. It is important to keep in mind that the edges of the cloud are shifting all the time". Every Church, according to Grzdelidze, "can decide to commemorate the witnesses on different ecumenical occasions, but it is important for the local communities to give substance to such commemorations". "The beginning of a process that may lead to commemorate together the cloud of witnesses went on went Grzdelidze is one of the steps we might begin to see for the unity of the Churches". Actually, "the ecumenical commemoration becomes a joint Christian testimony to the world, by recognising the believers in every Church", and "a step towards reconciliation, in those cases in which history has turned the heroes of one Church into the enemies of the other".
