"The Orthodox Church is not afraid of dialogue"

This article examines the position of the Orthodox Church with regard to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, as expressed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Documentary and analytical in nature, it draws on an encyclical by Patriarch Bartholomew I published during Lent 2010 in order to identify its fundamental ecclesiological orientations. The central idea is that the Orthodox Church fully embraces dialogical engagement, not out of doctrinal relativism, but because the truth it professes has no reason to shy away from confrontation with the other. The theological contribution of the article lies in its illumination of an Orthodox conception of dialogue grounded in the coherence between truth and witness: unity among Christians is presented as a prerequisite for the credibility of the Church's mission in the world.