Metropolitan Stephanos of Tallinn and All Estonia speaks to the Conference of European Churches

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been in Tallinn, Estonia since Friday, June 16, responding to a formal invitation from the leadership of the Conference of European Churches, in order to deliver the keynote speech at its General Assembly, on the topic: “What are our Ecumenical tasks in future Europe?”.

His Eminence Metropolitan Stephanos of Tallinn and All Estonia, in his speech to the members of the CEC, asked that the Churches become places of humility, dialogue and love.

The Metropolitan considers that Orthodoxy cannot afford to bypass the difficulties and temptations of the West, nor ignore her fears and doubts. Instead, the Orthodox Church must assimilate all this in a creative way.

For the head of the Autonomous Church of Estonia (which is under the Ecumenical Patriarchate), ecumenical dialogue should be a source of mutual inspiration and exchange of our respective theological ideas. Each Church should honestly ask itself, to what extent it really responds to the love that Christ invites us to, “the key to all our witness”.

Metropolitan Stephanos of Tallinn and All Estonia also noted that the trials that the Orthodox Church of Estonia went through (in the 20th century), were experienced as a transformation “that banishes all confessional pride, all feelings of cultural superiority, all cultural hegemony” in order to become “a humble Church which serves”.

Source: fosfanariou.gr