On 25 October, the Chaplain-President attended the morning session of Emouna Belgique (Home | Emouna (emounabelgium.be)) held at the Grande-Mosquée de Bruxelles: this year, there are three Anglican Emouna students: Philip Milton from Holy Trinity Brussels and Balthazar Nahimana and Marie-Rose Rwisasu from Saint-Esprit Mons. Meeting at the Great Mosque was especially important in the context of the ongoing and dreadful conflict in Israel and Palestine. The Chaplain-President then had lunch at the Haus der EKD Brüssel, the representation of the German Protestant Church to the EU, where a round table involved Dr Patrick Schnabel (senior counsel for the EKD), Baron Frans van Daele (EU special envoy for freedom of religion and belief) and Dr Elizabeta Kitanovic (FPTR Brussel) speaking on human rights. He then attended the editorial board of the peer-review journal Analecta Bruxellensia: International Studies in Religion. He then spent an hour in the office with the Secretary-General and the Second Secretary. He then attended the inaugural lecture by Prof Carol Harrison FBA of Oxford University as KU Leuven's Francqui professor this year, speaking on Augustine, sound and sense, and also spoke with two Anglican priest colleagues, Prof Hector Patmore and Canon Alan Strange, at the reception afterwards. He then attended the KU Leuven Current Events lecture on the current crisis in the eastern Congo, in connection with his current KU Leuven Theo Teams project on the DRC, with a round table including Professors Kanigula Mubagwa, Godefroid Muzalia Kihangu and Nathalie Vumilia Nakabanda of the Université Catholique de Bukavu. Please let no one reading this blog think that being an Anglican priest is boring. There is important representational, pastoral and academic work to be done and the Central Committee exists to enable this work to happen and to flourish in Belgium.
