Eastern Church Institute Regensburg
The Eastern Church Institute Regensburg ( OKI ) was founded as an institution of the German Bishops' Conference to support theology students from the Orthodox churches in their studies at Catholic theological faculties in Germany.
It also organizes mixed Catholic-Orthodox symposia and publishes a directory of Orthodox bishops under the title Orthodoxia . The institute is supported by the Association for the Promotion of the Eastern Church Institute Regensburg e. V.
history
The initiative for this institution came in 1960 from the then seminarians of the Germanicum Nikolaus Wyrwoll and Albert Rauch . After traveling through Orthodox countries, they pointed out that the anti-modernist oath with a formula of obedience to the Pope was an obstacle to the study of Orthodox students and priests in Catholic faculties.
The work of the OKI began on Easter day 1967 with a visit by the Regensburg Bishop Rudolf Graber to the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Constantinople / Istanbul.
From 1976 to 2012 the Orthodox students were able to live in the former Capuchin monastery in Regensburg , which the institute had converted for this purpose. The students have been accompanied in Paderborn at the Johann Adam Moehler Institute since 2013. Expert meetings, dialogues and conferences to build and maintain trust are carried out both from there and from other institutions (such as the Institute for Ecumenical Studies in Friborg, Pro Oriente Vienna, the joint Orthodox-Catholic working group St. Irenäus Paderborn).
On the occasion of the change of the accompanying task to Paderborn, both prelates were awarded the Bonifatius Medal of the German Bishops' Conference.
Prelate Rauch died on January 10, 2015. Prelate Wyrwoll accompanied the editorial staff for Orthodoxia (together with the Institute for Ecumenical Studies of the University of Friborg), the publication of the Epiphany series , the accompaniment of the alumni and the awarding of the Silver Rose from Constantinople / Istanbul .
With the reconstruction of church structures in the east and a now well-organized diaspora in the east, the previous framework conditions have changed significantly. Therefore, in 2016 the Eastern Church Institute of the Diocese of Regensburg was constituted as a new concept with simultaneous integration into the diocesan structure. Director became P. Dr. Dietmar already operating . In the future, too, it is intended to contribute to better mutual knowledge of Eastern and Western traditions and to the task of restoring church unity in diversity.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ "A sign of lived ecumenism": Scholarship program of the German Bishops' Conference for Orthodox and Oriental-Orthodox theologians . Press release of the German Bishops' Conference of July 19, 2013.
- ^ Eastern Church Institute of the Diocese of Regensburg. Retrieved December 21, 2017 .