Your Excellencies, Your Eminences, Distinguished Guests,
It is my greatest honour to welcome you to the Romanian Parliament, in my dual capacity as President of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy and as the representative of the President of the Chamber of Deputies of Romania, former Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu.
You are most warmly welcomed and deeply valued for your vocation and wisdom in building bridges and forging bonds between Eastern and Western communities and social compacts. We live at a time when open societies are labelled, a priori, as merely progressive, while closed societies are regarded as retrograde and excessively eccentric in their commitment to tradition. Is there a voice of reason capable of bringing together the ethics of care, compassion and solidarity with the virtue of conviviality, and of mediating between these preconceptions? If such a voice exists—and we firmly believe that it does—it must be allowed to bring to bear its reason and love for humanity, its prudence in safeguarding cultural heritage, and its power to connect cultural milieus. This is especially true here, where scholars, political actors, representatives of the cultural sector and academic practitioners join hands in pursuit of a shared, intelligible and authentic understanding of themselves, their identities and their interconnected roots.
I extend my warmest congratulations to the driving force behind this Congress, His Excellency President Emil Constantinescu, whose vision brought an event of such global significance to Bucharest and who leads, with great wisdom, the Institute Levant Institute for Advanced Studies for the Culture of Peace in its mission to foster a culture of peace.
As President of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, I welcome with gratitude and profound emotion the World Congress of Syriac Studies, hosted for the first time in 54 years in Eastern Europe and, more specifically, in Romania. You may regard this as a hallmark of our institutional and spiritual maturity. We share a common history of martyrs and heroes, of historical witnesses and agents; common, unromanticised perspectives on cosmology and metaphysics; and a shared experience of navigating the centres and peripheries of global power through ecumenical engagement, spiritual union and patristic heritage. Above all, we share expressions of faith, resilience and hope that a sustainable culture of peace may emerge from our union. Many careful steps have been taken in this direction. Political spheres, irrespective of their ideological orientations, have come to understand that peacebuilding can become a universal project only through active dialogue with scholars. Social spheres have likewise understood that religious values are not merely negotiated between the private and public realms, but are also fundamental to defining intimacy, personhood and authenticity. Cultural and academic traditions are increasingly aware that East and West can divide as well as connect, and that there is little value in imposing a secular, unilateral vision of progress whose pessimistic endpoint may be a world divided into “the West and the Rest”.
East and West constitute a twofold, interdependent paradigm through which we may live our faith while remaining true to ourselves. I invite you to keep this in mind as you explore creative and inspiring arguments that connect recent scholarly debates with political milestones and social challenges, while drawing attention to the urgent need to protect Christian cultural heritage in the Middle East and to connect it with other parts of the world. Enjoy your stay and, more importantly, take pride in the partnership to which each of you has already contributed. There can be no lasting peace without knowledge. As you may know, humanity’s challenges may be distilled into a classical dilemma: how can we do things right while also doing the right things? This conference offers an answer to that question and charts a path towards a credible convergence of political and cultural ambitions, raising awareness of the role of religious diplomacy, dialogue and cooperation across Christian and non-Christian boundaries. I wholeheartedly thank you for this generous opportunity and wish you a most pleasant stay in Romania!
