Organised with assistance from the Council of Europe, by the Metropolitan of Thebes and Levadia, Monsignor Jerome, a significant personality from the Greek episcopate, an International conference on the rather unexpected theme of -The Orthodox Woman in a United Europe" brought together in the Boeatian capital, from the 3rd to the 6th of November 1994, more than 300 delegates.

While most of those present were Greek, there were also numerous visitors from European countries where Orthodoxy exists either as a majority religion or a fairly signiflcant minority religion. Women from Russia, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and also from Cyprus, Albania, Finland, Poland, from the former Czechoslovakia and from the Orthodox diaspora of Western Europe had, in this way, a chance to express themselves about the situation in their respective churches where they assume numerous and diverse responsibilities. Their reports were often moving.

This conference, as its title indicates, deliberately aimed at combining two themes and two challenges : on one hand. the making of a United Europe, a process in which the Orthodox Church is a major spiritual force in Eastern Europe is called upon to participate, and on the other hand, the definition, for and by Orthodox women, without loss of their own identity of new tasks and new roles in a Europe characterised by the modern, western way of life.

It has been said. over and over, that the European community must not be seen as limited simply to economic and political boundaries. It has a cultural and ethnic dimension. It is a question of breathing a soul into a United Europe by means of an awareness of common spiritual values and roots, or, as the Greeks put it, a common "ethos". It is in this area that Orthodox churches can play a responsible role. In the current European community, Orthodoxy is essentially represented by Greece, the only Orthodox nation that is a member, as a number of Greek participants pointed out.

However, apart from slightly superficial considerations, where a certain degree of self-satisfaction comes into play, should one not investigate the true meaning and extent of the influence of the Orthodox presence in a community whose 'founding fathers' after the second world war, as the Metropolitan Chrysostome representing the Ecumenical Patriarch, reminded us, were Roman Catholics. Inheritors of a great spiritual tradition, priests and laity, men and women, can Orthodox people in all humility (for we carry this treasure in earthenware pots) bring something to the common tasks of a United Europe? Could they not, in turn, receive from it the motivation to widen their horizons beyond the bounds of the narrow parochialism within which they are often tempted to remain?

These questions and others - in particular the place of Orthodox women in this new, very global minded Europe which is taking shape- were dealt with by the various speakers: Metropolitans Chrysostome of Ephasus and John of Pergamon; Mesdames Helen Gehkatzi-Ahrweiler, former vice-chancellor of the University of Paris; Teny Pirri-Simonian of the World Council of Churches-, Dimitra Koukoura of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tbessalonika and Professors George Mantzarides, P Akanthopoulos and J Fountoulis of the same Thessalonian faculty of theology.

The matter of the ordination of women seemed to lie outside these parameters. It featured, however, on the programme, giving rise to a lively debate which allowed people to express diverse, subtle and illuminating opinions. "the ordination of women priests remains an open question, and one to which the Orthodox Church has not yet given a whole lot of adequate attention". This declaraiton by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (cf. SOP Sep/Oct 1994) was quoted with some satisfaction by a female Greek theologian. It was thought to be a pity that the unanimous wish of the inter-orthodox meeting of Rhodes, that women deacons be appointed as in the past, has been, up to now, ignored.

The conference atmosphere was characterised by great freedom of expression. Delegates boldly looked forward to a similar conference being organised in Western Europe and to the foundation of a World Alliance of Orthodox Women.

( English translation by Colin Williams, in Perth, Western Australia).