The Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII (Foundation for Religious Sciences John XXIII, FSCIRE) of the University of Bologna is best known for its work in ecumenical circles. It has published already more than 20 years ago a history of the Second Vatican Council under the direction of G. Alberigo. The publication of a further study of the Council’s decrees and the Confessions of the Reformation churches is just about to be finalized. Now the FSCIRE has a new goal of producing a multi-volume history of the ecumenical movement.
A small group of editors, of which the Lutheran representative is the Institute’s Prof. André Birmelé, is responsible for seeing this project through. The task force meets at the Monasterio di Bose in Italy. Initially it sought to put together a wide-ranging picture of the current ecumenical situation. A first colloquium in the fall of 2014 served toward this end. Its results were published as Toward a History of the Desire for Christian Unity: Preliminary Research Papers: Proceedings of the International Conference at the Monastery of Bose (November 2014): With a Foreword of Enzo Bianchi and a Postface of André Birmelé, ed. Luca Ferracci (LIT Verlag, 2015).
A further consultation took place from 26 to 28 October 2015, once again at Bose. It occupied itself with the models of unity that have been developed over the past years. The results of this consultation will also be published in due course. One the basis of these first colloquia, the contents of the various volumes of the comprehensive history of the ecumenical movement will be determined.