The life of Congress

This article reports on the 2nd General Congress of Orthodox Youth in Western Europe, held in Dijon from November 1 to 3, 1974, which brought together more than 700 participants from numerous countries. Michel Evdokimov offers a detailed account of it, reconstructing the progression of the sessions and the substance of the major addresses. The article successively presents the lectures by Olivier Clément on contemporary atheism and the path toward faith, by Metropolitan Georges Khodre on ecclesial paradoxes, by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom on resurrection in the face of death, by Father Basil of Mount Athos on the monastic tradition, and by Father Cyril of Marseille on the theological synthesis of the congress. On the ecclesiological level, the event illustrates the vitality of Orthodoxy in the Western diaspora and raises the question of canonical unity among jurisdictions, while bearing witness to a significant liturgical and spiritual convergence among different patriarchates.