Mgr Georges

This text constitutes the message addressed by Archbishop Georges Wagner, archbishop of Russian parishes in Western Europe under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, to the Orthodox Congress of October 31. It is a brief address, pastoral and doctrinal in nature. The message develops an ecclesiology centered on the local eucharistic community as the basic unit of the Church of Christ, in which the mystery of participation in the Body of the Risen One is fulfilled. Archbishop Wagner emphasizes the structuring role of the episcopal and presbyteral ministry, compared to the skeleton of a living organism. On the theological level, the contribution lies in the articulation between sacramental life, hierarchical structure and Orthodox ecclesiology of the parish, presented as the primary and regular locus of the building up of the Church.