The address of His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of Romania, delivered at the Bossey Institute reception offered for the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, 26 January 2016:
His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew asked us to talk on behalf of all the guests invited to today’s dinner.
We first want to thank the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, for the invitation to this dinner offered at the Bossey Institute.
This Institute, founded in 1946, that is two years before the establishment of the World Council of Churches (1948), has had and still has today a particular significance for the education of young people, for the inter-Christian dialogue, for the meetings of clergy and lay people coming from all the Churches involved in promoting the unity of Christendom. Among the many conferences, seminaries, meetings and events organized by the Institute of Bossey, the seminary of Orthodox theology and spirituality has had a fruitful continuity.
Mainly Catholic and Protestant Christians attended this seminary, desiring to know better the Orthodox theology and spirituality. The lecturers who were invited to speak during the works of this seminary were Orthodox theologians renowned for their theological work and their spiritual life.
For eight years (1980-1988), we have personally organized such an annual seminary, in order to facilitate the participants to get to know more thoroughly the Orthodox theology and spirituality. Among the directors of the Institute of Bossey who led the Institute before us, we mention Prof. Nikos Nissiotis (from Greece), and the present director Fr. Ioan Sauca (from Romania). During the last ten years, several buildings of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey have been modernized in order to facilitate the fruitful and various activity of the Institute.
Many Orthodox young people who had studied at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey in the past 60 years have become bishops (including the current Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew), priests, professors and lay missionaries of the Orthodox Church.
For all these, we express our gratitude and we wish that the present and the future activity of the Bossey Institute might be fruitful and dynamical for the benefit of every Church.
†DANIEL
Patriarch of Romania
Château de Bossey,
26 January 2016
