January 2020 Lecture : Pascal Gollnisch

The PISAI’s series of lectures continues with the annual Etienne Renaud Lecture which will be held on Thursday 16 January 2020 at 17h00 in the Maurice Borrmans Library of the PISAI. Mgr Pascal Gollnisch will present an address in French entitled L’Œuvre d’Orient aux défis des sociétés du Moyen-Orient. The lecture aims to retrace the history of the Eastern Churches, with particular focus on the central role that Eastern Christians play in their lands and the challenges to be faced for the future of the region.
Born in 1953, Pascal Gollnisch is a priest of the diocese of Paris. Director of French pilgrimages to Poland at the age of twenty-four, he travelled for over 30 years in the Middle East and Europe, becoming profoundly knowledgeable about the history and characteristics of the Churches of the East. Since 2010 he has been Director General of the Œuvre d’Orient, an institution created in mid-nineteenth century in France to support the Churches of the East in difficulty.
Since 2014 he has been Vicar General of the Ordinariate of Eastern Catholics in France, a jurisdiction erected in 1954 in favour of the Eastern Catholic communities of France. He was recently appointed chorbishop (archpriest) of the Syriac Catholic diocese of Beirut. He is the author of Chrétiens d’Orient : résister sur notre terre, Cherche-Midi 2016.