Twelve percent of Christians in the world are Orthodox, most of them live in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In addition, Orthodox diasporas are present across the world and especially in North America, Australia and Western Europe. This global Orthodox world is historically divided by the rivalry between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate. The Russian war on Ukraine has deepened the conflict and has brought this internal division to the attention of a broader public. Global Orthodoxy is marked by cross-cutting tensions. Among these are tensions between a pro-democratic, modernity-affirmative Orthodoxy and an autocratic, anti-modern Orthodoxy; between church hierarches and the laity; and between a nation-bound and a universal Orthodox church identity. These differences do not neatly overlap with each other, but cut across global Orthodoxy in different ways. Glossing over such existing complexities, theological differences are often mapped onto geopolitical conflicts, with the Ecumenical Patriarchate associated with the West and in particular the United States, and the Moscow Patriarchate tied to the imperial idea of a “Russian world”. This conference seeks to analyze and map the complex fault lines in contemporary global Orthodoxy.
9:00 am Welcome Coffee
9:30 am Welcome Remarks
Kristina Stoeckl Luiss University
Silke Schmitt Hanns Seidl Stiftung Italien/Vatikan
9:45 am Geopolitics and Religion: The Role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
Elizabeth Prodromou Boston College
10:00 am Theologies and War versus Theologies of War
Aristotle Papanikolaou Fordham University
10:45 am Discussion
11:00 am The (In)Activity of the Orthodox Church of Georgia
Tamara Grzdelidze Ilia State University, Tbilisi, and former Ambassador of Georgia to the Holy Sea
11:45 am Global Orthodoxy: Multiplying Parallel Orthodoxies
Cyril Hovorun Huffington Ecumenical Institute, Loyola Marymount University
12:30 pm Discussion
1:00 pm Lunch Break
2:00 pm Institutional Greetings
Sergio Fabbrini Head of the Department of Political Science, Luiss University
2:15 pm Orthodoxy in Ukraine on the Crossroad of Influences, Challenges and Self-Definitions
Andrii Yurash Ukrainian Ambassador to the Holy Sea
3:00 pm Book Presentation Unholy War: the Russo-Ukrainian War and Religion
Nicholas Denysenko Valparaiso University
Commentary
Josè Casanova Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Georgetown University
4:00 pm Coffee Break
4:15 pm Invisible Diversity in the Russian Orthodox Church
Kathy Rousselet Sciences Po Paris
5:00 pm Closing Remarks