At the Centre for Eastern Christianity, Heythrop College, in the Marie-Eugenie Room. All are welcome
- Louis Massignon’s influence on the teaching of Vatican II on Muslims and Islam: Christian Krokus, University of Scranton
- Louis Massignon: The Prophet of Dialogue of Civilizations: Fabio Petito, University of Sussex
- Responding to Islam as Priests, Mystics and Trailblazers: Louis Massignon, Kenneth Cragg, and Rowan Williams: Richard Sudworth, Heythrop College, University of London
- Louis Massignon, Olivier Clément, Thomas Merton: Authenticity, Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue – a common bond, a common destiny: Stefanie Hugh Donovan, Heythrop
- Louis Massignon and Jerusalem: Political-Theology and the encounter Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Anthony O’Mahony, Heythrop College, University of London
Here is the message from Patriarch Gregorios:
Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate
Cairo
Prot.
523/2012R 18 November 2012
Centre for Eastern Christianity
Heythrop College,
University of London
From His Beatitude
Patriarch Gregorios III
Greetings
for the Conference
27 November 2012
The Life and
Thought of Louis Massignon (1883-1962): Comparative political and theological
perspectives
From Egypt, (where I am today attending the enthronement of His
Holiness, Pope Tawadros II of the Coptic Orthodox Church) and the very place
where Louis Massignon exercised his mission as a Christian in love with Islam,
by emphasizing the tradition of badaliyya or
substitution, I am happy to send these greetings to your conference.
Here on 4 November our Archbishop George Bakar, Patriarchal Vicar of
Egypt and Sudan, commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the repose of the
Priest Louis Massignon († 31 October 1962) in the same church of Our Lady of
Peace, where he had been ordained in 1950 by Bishop Boutros Kamel Medawar
S.M.S.P., then Patriarchal Vicar of Maximos IV (Sayegh).
Here too lived Mary Kahil, an Egyptian Greek Catholic who had vowed
with Massignon as early as 1934 to pray for Muslims and who devoted herself to
Muslim women’s political and social causes.
Here too they launched, with Archimandrite Xavier Eid and others, Al Ikha ad-Dini (a still active Muslim-Christian Fraternity). Their
influence reached the Second Vatican Council. Without them the Conciliar
Document Nostra Aetate would not have seen the light of day in its
definitive form with the well-known section on Islam, which now forms the basis
for Catholic dialogue with Islam.
As Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, of
Alexandria and Jerusalem, I am glad to recall that Louis Massignon’s ideas
flourished in the ambiance of the Melkite Church in Egypt, which had become a
second home to our people coming from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine to work and
develop the country.
Thank you for inviting me to greet you at this celebration of
Massignon’s life and work at Heythrop College in the University of London. We
hope we may organise jointly with you in this Massignon jubilee year a similar
conference at our Liqaa Center in Lebanon.
Massignon can be our guide towards better understanding with Muslims
and all our neighbours in this Arab Spring time of revolutions in the Middle
East and of growth of Muslim presence in Europe.
Perhaps we
may learn to be not merely in dialogue but in love with each other, as the
Evangelist John reminds us, “God so loved the world that he gave his
only-begotten Son.” (John 3: 16)
Gregorios III