Autobiographical notes

This article presents the unpublished autobiographical notes of Olivier Clément, written in 1998 at the request of Father Vladimir Zelinsky and published in the journal *Contacts*. In the form of a retrospective testimony, Clément traces his spiritual and intellectual journey: born into an atheist milieu, he discovers Orthodox Christianity through Lossky, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev, before receiving Orthodox baptism at the age of thirty. He then offers a critical reading of his own theological work, emphasizing his concern for the universality of Orthodoxy and its dialogue with secularized modernity. The article also provides a notable historical contribution through his accounts of meetings with Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope John Paul II, emblematic figures of ecumenical rapprochement, thus shedding light on the stakes of interconfessional dialogue in the second half of the twentieth century.