A Barnabite contribution to Ecumenism

 

 

 

Fr. Grigorii Petrovich Agostino Schouvaloff (1804-1859) was a Russian aristocrat who converted to Catholicism (1843) and to the priesthood (1857) after a dramatic route told in Augustinian style in his book My Conversion and Vocation."  He was a patriot and polyglot of European education, cultivated poetry and great friendships, offered his life for his motherland and started a true crusade for the return of Orthodox Russia to the Catholic Church.

 

 

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In 1862 Fr. Cerare Tondini, barnabite founded the "Association of prayers for the return of our separated brethren of the Greek-Russian Church to Catholic unity," spreading it across Europe. He himself was a pilgrim from East to West as a missionary and a scientist, a diplomat and a writer, with an enthusiasm and a boldness that only death could stop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Fr. Cerare M. Tondini De' QUARENGHI,  Barnabite - A pioneer of Ecumenism

by Bp. Andrea M. Erba, CRSP