c. 2004 Religion News Service

(A longtime ecumenical leader, the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky is the Orthodox Church in America’s assistant to the chancellor for interchurch relations and ecumenical witness. He is vice chairman of the board of directors of International Orthodox Christian Charities.)

(UNDATED) On May 1, when 10 new member countries joined the European Union, some 80 people were meeting at the historic Valamo Monastery in Finland. They came from Africa and the Middle East, from Europe and South America and North America, to participate in a conference, “Orthodox Diakonia: The Social Witness and Service of the Orthodox Church.”

The conference was the fruit of the collaboration of three organizations: the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, the world’s most inclusive ecumenical organization and forum; International Orthodox Christian Charities, a Baltimore-based humanitarian organization of Orthodox Christians of North America; and Ortaid, the Orthodox Church of Finland’s two-year-old relief and development office.

It is well known there is no end to the convening of conferences. Why was this conference timely and necessary? Why was it a unique initiative? What did this conference offer the Orthodox Churches and the world? What are the next steps?

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, for a short time it appeared that a peaceful and just future was opening before the world. Though the process of greater integration in Europe, expressed in part by the expansion of the European Union, has many positive dimensions and carries great promise, it also brings challenges. One such challenge is a new division of Europe _ along largely economic and political lines.

The collapse of the communist totalitarian systems in Eastern Europe was positive in terms of greater liberty. Churches and religious communities oppressed for decades were liberated to rebuild their religious life and to take their place in the public square. At the same time, a high proportion of the population of formerly communist societies was pushed beneath the poverty line.

It is also important to note the 20th century in Europe ended with large-scale violence in the Balkans, involving ethnic hatreds and confrontations and religious emotions and memories.

Finally, the violence of terrorism _ in New York and Washington, and most recently in Madrid and Moscow and Grozny _ dominates the media and the consciousness of millions of people. And Baghdad is today a city that has seen decades of violence _ the violence of repressive government and of war, and now, simultaneously, the violence of terrorism and occupation.

Against this background, the Orthodox Churches, in their own contexts, have responded to the suffering caused by poverty and war, reaching out compassionately to those in need regardless of their race or ethnicity or religion. Yet it became critically important, urgently necessary, for the Orthodox Churches and organizations to share their experiences, their successes and failures.

It became necessary to reflect together on the humanitarian challenges the world faces, and to do so in a way that holds together the theological and the practical, the experience of the past and the demands of the present. Thus, the conference on Orthodox Diakonia _ social service _ was timely and necessary.

The Orthodox Churches do not have readily at hand the mechanisms to ensure the sharing of information and resources, collaboration and common action. This made the Orthodox Diakonia conference, organized by the WCC, IOCC, and Ortaid/Finland, and blessed by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and the other patriarchs and primates of Orthodox Churches, a unique initiative.

The participants of the Valamo conference called for the creation of a global Orthodox network to strengthen the Orthodox response to poverty and injustice. Also, the conference participants committed themselves to work toward the formation of an association of Orthodox diakonia.

A four-member committee was named to lead in the planning of a follow-up conference within two years in the expectation this would result in establishment of an association for Orthodox diakonia.

Thus, the conference on Orthodox Diakonia offers the Orthodox Churches a process and a mechanism to work collaboratively on the theological and practical imperatives of social service, the ministry of compassion, and witness for justice.

On Sunday, May 2, while the conference participated in the Divine Liturgy in Finland, the canonization of several new saints was taking place at the Orthodox Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Paris.

Mother Maria (Skobtsova), her son Yuri, Father Dimitri Klepinin, and Ilya Fondaminsky died in Nazi death camps during World War II. They went to their deaths as punishment for their actions to save the lives of Jews consigned to destruction in the Holocaust.

Before World War II, the four martyred Orthodox Christians had founded an Orthodox social action organization to feed the hungry and give shelter to the homeless. This canonization, remembered in the context of the Valamo conference on Orthodox Diakonia, was a reminder that witness to justice and compassion is made at a costly price.

DEA/JL END KISHKOVSKY