After my private audience with His All Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, we have finalized the speakers and agenda for the upcoming Orientale Lumen EuroEast III Conference scheduled for July 5-8, 2010 in Constantinople. The conference theme will be “The Councils of the Church” and the plenary speakers will be:

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  • Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia, Greek Orthodox theologian and retired Spaulding Lecturer of Eastern Christianity at Oxford University, England
  • Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, SJ, Secretary of the Congregation for Eastern Churches in the Vatican, and former rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome
  • Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ, Professor Emeritus of Liturgy of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, and prolific author and theologian of the Byzantine Liturgy
  • Archimandrite Job Getcha, Professor of the Catholic Institute of Paris and of the Institute of Orthodox Theology in Chambesy, Switzerland, of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
  • Sister Vassa Larin, Professor at the University of Vienna, Austria and nun of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
  • Professor Richard Schneider, specializing in iconology at York University in Toronto and St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York
  • The moderator will be Bishop John Michael Botean of the Romanian Greek Catholic Eparchy of St. George in Canton, Ohio, USA.

In addition to the conference agenda of plenaries and liturgies, several special events and tours will take place:

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will address the conference at the opening session

The conference will conduct one full day of sessions at the Halki Orthodox Theological Academy off the coast of Istanbul

The conference will participate with His All Holiness in a memorial service at the tomb of Patriarch Athenagoras

A tour of several churches around Constantinople will be conducted at the end of the conference by Professor Schneider with religious and theological explanations of the churches and their architecture

Metropolitan Kallistos will lead a pilgrimage to Ephesus and the island of Patmos to the monastery of Saint John the Evangelist and to the cave where by tradition, Saint John wrote the Book of Revelation

More details and online registration for the conference can be found at www.olconference.com on the Future Conferences page.