Antoine Lambrechts

This article by Father Antoine Lambrechts examines the relations of Archbishop Basil Krivocheine (1900-1985), Orthodox Archbishop of Brussels, with the Roman Catholic Church, using his ties with the Benedictine monastery of Chevetogne as a guiding thread. Drawing on a documentary study based primarily on the archbishop's private correspondence, the article traces the evolution of his position, from marked mistrust during his Athonite period to lasting friendships with Catholic patrologists. The central idea is that Krivocheine conceived of ecumenical dialogue exclusively on the basis of the faith of the undivided Church and the patristic tradition, rejecting any purely diplomatic or gestural rapprochement. The article thus sheds original light on the internal tensions within Russian Orthodoxy in the face of Catholic ecumenism, particularly through his opposition to the pro-Catholic approach of Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad.

This article by Father Antoine Lambrechts, a monk of Chevetogne, offers a biographical and theological study devoted to Archimandrite Spiridon Kislakov (1875-1930), author of the celebrated *Missions en Sibérie* translated into French by Pierre Pascal in 1950. Drawing on a long-inaccessible work, the *Confession of a Priest before the Church* (Kiev, 1919), which remained unknown throughout the entire Soviet period, the article reconstructs the identity, life journey, and thought of this missionary monk who came from the common people. The study shows that Spiridon cannot be reduced to a mere witness of Russian popular religiosity: he represents an evangelical current of pastoral renewal within the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church, marked by a radical evangelical pacifism and a critical ecclesiology. The principal contribution of the article is to shed light, through previously unpublished sources, on the spiritual and ecclesiological significance of a work that had until then been poorly understood.