The fifth annual symposium of the Matteo Ricci Institute took place in Macau, Dec. 1-3. Macau was chosen as the Institutes permanent working site and the site of symposiums as a place of uninterrupted encounter between the West and China for the past 450 years, and as well as "a place of memory" where the presence of history is felt everywhere.
The symposiums theme, "History and Memory", was turned to reflecting on the past as the foundation for building the future. The symposium has been called to serve as a bridge between cultures, historical paths of Chinese and Western schools of thought. The basic themes of the symposium concerned questions of epistemology, connections between historical themes and Memory, problems of methodology and interdisciplinary connections in the context of the history of Christianity in China. Taking part in the work of the symposium were more than 100 representatives from the Peoples Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, France, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the USA, Great Britain and Italy. Priest Dionisy Pozdnyaev also took part in work of the Symposium.