This Saturday, His Beatitude Theophilos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, met the students, researchers and teaching staff of the programme of Religious Studies within the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures. The meeting was held at the Law Faculty. His Beatitude spoke about the situation of the Christians of Jerusalem and about the issues the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem is faced with.
“We represent the Holy Land. And we represent not only ourselves, but the entire Christianity and, especially our Apostolic and Universal Church. Today, Jerusalem has become the focus of the entire international community, and this is because the city is associated with the sacred history. The sacred history, as we all know, is the one that began at Sinai Mount, with Prophet Moses, and ended in Bethlehem, with the Mystery of Incarnation, and certainly, in Jerusalem, with the crucifixion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is useless to say that those who do not know the sacred history – and to make things clearer, the history of the Bible (Old and New Testament) – cannot really understand what is going on. This is the reason why in the Middle East, with Jerusalem in the middle, there is a conflict between Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and Jews (Israeli). But this conflict is not limited strictly to this place, because it is something related to everybody. It was said that everything that is good in the world comes from Jerusalem as well as that everything bad comes from the same place, is it not? It is also said that the true reason of the conflict of the Holy Land is religion, and that the heart of the conflict is religion. Many well known diplomats and politicians cannot understand and offer solutions (for solving the conflict) because they ignore, today, the significance and importance of religion”, His Beatitude Theophilos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, said, according to Trinitas TV.
On this occasion, the students and researchers presented the academic projects unfolded within the Programme of Religious Studies of the University of Bucharest and addressed several questions to His Beatitude.
Members of the teaching staff of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of Bucharest and of the Faculty of Philosophy within the University of Bucharest attended.
