Un tentativo fallito di pacificazione religiosa. Alcuni aspetti della trasmissione dell’invito al Concilio Vaticano I ai vescovi greco-ortodossi dell’Impero Ottomano e del Regno Ellenico

In this paper we present the invitation to participate in the First Vatican Council, addressed to the Greek Orthodox bishops of the Ottoman Empire (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Thrace, Bulgaria, Romania, Anatolia, Cyprus and Crete, Middle East, Egypt) and the Kingdom of Greece. The study focuses specially on the Orthodox bishops reached by the invitation, through visits by Catholic clerics or through postal expeditions. The sources used are the correspondence between the Catholic bishops and apostolic vicars of these areas and the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, which are found in the archive of this Congregation and partly in the historical work on the First Vatican Council by Eugenio Cecconi (published between 1872 and 1879). We try to identify the reasons of the failure of this initiative, as well as the attitudes and reactions of the Catholic prelates in charge of the operation with regard to the Roman directives.