MALTA

Looking to the South

“Malta is a small island, but with a strategic position. We are at the heart of Mediterranean Europe, the only ones in the continent to pray to Allah”, said the Maltese Minister of Foreign Affairs, MICHAEL FRENDO on meeting journalists in Rome on Friday, 12 January. The meeting was the first of a series with […]

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BULGARIA

Not just guests

“In the Catholic Church we feel a duty to prepare our faithful to feel part of this Christian family that is Europe”, says the President of the Bulgarian Bishops’ Conference, Apostolic Exarch HRISTO PROJKOV, who tells S IR how the Catholic Church in Bulgaria is experiencing the country’s entry into the European Union. We interviewed […]

di Iva Mihailova

ROMANIA

A new people

“What today is still difficult at the level of church leaders, is not so at the grassroots. Ecumenism between ordinary people is progressing by leaps and bounds. One day the hierarchy, now justly engaged in official dialogue, will realize that a new people, transcending the divisions between the Churches, is being born from the grassroots”. […]

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ABBÉ PIERRE

A life devoted to the poor

Following a pulmonary infection, Abbé Pierre, founder of the Emmaus Community, died at the age of 94 on 22 January. He had been admitted to the hospital of Val-de-Grace in Paris on 15 January. News of his death was announced by Martin Hirsch, president of the Compagnons d’Emmaus. One of the great protagonists of French […]

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Ireland: new Anglican Primate

Alan Harper is the new Archbishop of Armagh and Anglican Primate of Ireland. He succeeds Robin Eames, who retired in December. Known as a man of dialogue, the new Primate, 62 years old, lost no time in pronouncing his opposition to the Act of Settlement of 1701, which prevents Catholics and anyone who marries a […]

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Hungary: Taizé youth and Orthodox priests

Just over two weeks after the Taizé ecumenical meeting in Zagreb, some 60 of the 300 Hungarian youngsters who had attended the youth rally in Croatia met together again the Franciscan church at Pest in the Hungarian capital. The meeting opened with songs and a screening of video footage of the meeting in Zagreb; then […]

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ECUMENISM AND DIALOGUE

Austria: “restoring the image of God”

The common roots of Christianity and Judaism, as also the need to overcome any kind of religious fanaticism, were underlined by the Orthodox Metropolitan of Vienna, Michael Staikos, during the ecumenical service to mark the “Day of Judaism” on 18 January. The celebration, held in the Lutheran church of Wien-Gumpendorf, was sponsored by the Ecumenical […]

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Bartholomew I at the Council of Europe

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I was one of the guests of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that is meeting in Strasbourg (from 22nd to 26th January) for its winter session. The Orthodox leader spoke in front of the floor of the Council, founded in 1949, with 46 member states, on the opening […]

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Saint Benedict and Europe

“The respect of the specificity and individuality of persons, peoples and states” to accomplish a “unity that will promote diversity”. These are some of the principles drawn from the Benedictine monastic experience, submitted in Strasbourg, the venue of the EU assembly, by the primate of the Benedictine Congregation, father Notker Wolf, and deemed “helpful, even […]

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Lutherans: finnish delegation to the Pope

“The relationships among the Christians in Finland developed in a way that generated hope for the future of ecumenism”. Benedict XVI said that to the members of the ecumenical delegation coming from Finland during the Feast of St. Enrico. “They are praying and working together, witnessing the Gospel publicly. And it is exactly this convincing […]

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