THE PROFESSOR AND THE PATRIARCH
Spiritual humanism against nationalisms and globalization
- Category: Religions
- Author/Editor: Andrea Riccardi
- Format: Essay/Paperback
- Dimension: 15 cms x 23 cms
- Pages: 208
- Price: 20 €
- Year: 2018
- Rights Sold: French, Greek
Review
In '68, Olivier Clément, a French professor, author of famous pamphlets and essays, met in Istanbul the Patriarch Athenagoras, the highest authority of the Orthodox clergy. People from very different stories, belonging to different generations and worlds: one to the secular France after the Second World War and the riots of ‘68; the other to the Christian East, rooted on the banks of the Bosphorus, in ancient Byzantium, which became the Istanbul of the Republic of Kemal Atatürk. The meeting allows the western world to get to know, through a long interview, the prophetic strength of Atenagora, a man dedicated to unity among Christians and to the union between spirit and modernity. The East-West non-opposition, their need to interact will be the spark that will direct Clément's thought throughout life. This is the story of a meeting in which interviewed and interviewer, from two different points of view, try to respond together to the great questions of a world that was going through an epochal crisis. The background of '68 lit the tones of the meeting. The protest, which seemed to be iconoclastic, was read as a great instance of justice, as a desire to rediscover a spiritual fullness.