The Chair was established in synergy with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople fifty years after the first meeting between the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras and the founder of the Focolare Movement Chiara Lubich (13 June 1967).

Co-chaired by His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos Vgenopoulos and Prof. Msgr. Piero Coda

The Chair was established in synergy with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople fifty years after the first meeting between the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras and the founder of the Focolare Movement Chiara Lubich (13 June 13 1967), which resulted in a bright path of friendship and collaboration between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Focolare Movement with significant fruits on the way of the unity, in continuity with the Ph.D. conferred on Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (26 October 2015), and inspired by His Eminence the Metropolitan Gennadios Zervos, Orthodox Archbishop of Italy and Malta.

Its mission is to focus on the theological significance, to study the historical stages and to examine the existential, cultural and social implications of the ecumenical journey towards the full and visible unity of the Church through the mutual exchange of the spiritual, liturgical, theological, cultural and artistic riches of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.

The Chair offers at the same time a space and a series of academically qualified formation paths to those who want to adequately prepare themselves to offer their contribution of life and witness, thought and dialogue.