What was Vatican II for the Church? What process of aggiornamento and of renewal were really promoted with the celebration and reception of the Council? What did it represent for the path to the visible unity of Christians? Fifty years after its opening what still needs to be done to promote the knowledge of the promulgated documents? For Christianity in Asia, does Vatican II represent a privileged source for opening dialogue between religions? These are some of the many questions that were posed by the organizers of the international congress “Revisiting Vatican II: 50 Years of Renewal”, held at Bangalore from January 31 to February 3, 2013 (p. 117-124).

According a tradition still alive in Orthodoxy, the first image that an Hagiographa must paint is that of the Transfiguration of the Lord. For this art it is not sufficient to have talent nor theoretical or practical instruction. The internal disposition, the preparation and the path of the iconographer in the iconographic representation of the Transfiguration of the Lord, the liturgical use of his work together with the successive patristic interpretations of the New Testament episode seem to constitute a synthesis of Orthodox spirituality (p. 103-108).

Africa is the bearer of an “otherness”: a different logic of seeing, living and being in the world. If we can indeed speak of ecumenism in Africa, it is much more demanding to try and describe an African ecumenism “constructed” from the indigenous cosmic visions(p. 75-84).

The document published in 1984 at the conclusion of the second phase of the international Catholic-Lutheran dialogue, together with the Final Report of the first phase of the International Anglican-Catholic commission in 1981, maybe the highest point achieved in the ecumenical dialogue between the Christian churches of the West and offers most audacious prospective for the ri-establishment of full ecclesial communion between Catholics and Lutherans (p. 53-60).

Up to the last day Martini offered important stimuli for civil awareness and in the relations of the churches beginning with his own. The Milanese Protestants give witness to such in the first instance (p. 45-48).

«Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path» (Ps 119:105), these are the words chosen by Card. Martini to be written on his tomb. These fully reveal the primacy assumed by the Word in all of his life. Next to that directed by the Word was the attention he had for Jewish tradition. Martini emphasized in particular the proven loss by the Christian community of believers in Jesus Christ caused by the so called proto-schism in which the Church was deprived of the judeo-christian nourishment. It was more than ever indispensable to recover a positive relationship with living Judaism (p. 27-35).