Fraternal visits and monastic exchanges
from the Letter to our friends n° 57
Visits to Bose of monks and nuns of other communities have created or renewed ties of friendship and fraternity
During the last few months we again had the joy of welcoming among us several bishops: the bishop of our diocese of Biella, Gabriele Mana, who came for the vespers of Transfiguration; Piero Marini, president of the Pontifical committee for the International Eucharistic Congresses; Tommaso Valentinetti, archbishop of Pescara; Alceste Catella, bishop of Casale Monferrato and president of the Bishops’ commission for liturgy of the Italian Bishops’ Conference; Giuseppe Cavallotto, bishop of Cuneo and Fossano; Franco Giulio Brambilla, bishop of Novara; Gianfranco Agostino Gardin, bishop of Treviso; Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, Catholic archbishop of Minsk and Mahilev; Adriaan van Luyn, retired bishop of Rotterdam; Paolo Magnani, retired bishop of Treviso; Claudio Gugerotti, apostolic nuncio to Belarus; Martin Modeus, Lutheran bishop of Linköping in Sweden; the retired bishop of the same diocese, Martin Lind; Kyrillos, Orthodox metropolitan of Karditsa (Greece).
In September canon Jonathan Goodall of the Church of England, an old friend, made his spiritual retreat in Bose in preparation for his episcopal ordination, which took place in London on 25 September and in which our br Guido participated.
On the occasion of the feast of St Andrew, a delegation of the Commission for ecumenism of Piedmont and Val d’Aosta, led by Piergiorgio Debernardi of Pinerolo, traveled to Istanbul to visit the ecumenical patriarchate. Br Guido, delegate for ecumenism of the Biella diocese, was able to participate in this occasion of warm fraternity. After a prayer at the tomb of the beloved patriarch Athenagoraa, the delegation was received in audience by His Holiness Bartholomeos, who in his talk and in the cordial dialogue that followed warmly exhorted those present to proceed confidently on the road of dialogue, in obedience to the Lord’s will.