"Encounter, Listen, Understand": The Taizé Experience in Europe Behind the Iron Curtain

The essay reconstructs the history of the relationships woven by the Taizé Community with Christians from Eastern European countries in the second half of the last century. The encounter with the different faces of a Christian youth beyond the Iron Curtain, who in Taizé experienced for the first time a unified European space, became from the early 1960s one of the principal directions of the community’s commitment, and is fundamental to understanding its distinctive international influence. The contribution therefore seeks to shed a first light on this history, drawing on entirely unpublished documentation and on the testimony of many protagonists involved in the construction of this singular continental and ecumenical network.