On Friday 8 October at 4 pm, the talk “Reading, Doing and Transmitting as Women” with Lama Guelongma Tsondru, Teresa Forcades and Asma Lamrabet will take place, which you can watch live on the Monastery of Pedralbes YouTube channel.
On 7 and 8 October, the Office for Religious Affairs (OAR) and the Reial Monestir de Santa Maria de Pedralbes are putting on the “Fe(r) i dones” conference , subtitled “Texts/Rituals/Transmission”. It aims to showcase and evaluate the role of women in different religious and spiritual convictions, beliefs and traditions. In this year’s edition, curated by Montse Castellà i Olivé, the participants include renowned thinkers, experts in the study of their traditions and also in reflecting on the role and value of women in that context.
The conference is the result of various collaborations between the Reial Monestir de Pedralbes and the Office for Religious Affairs and responds to the shared goal of exploring the relationship between women and spirituality, fostering dialogue and recognising feminine reality, often rendered invisible within the religious traditions concerned.
One of the highlights of the conference will take place on the afternoon of 8 October, with the round table REFLECTIONS AND DIALOGUE “Reading, Doing and Transmitting, as Women”(4 pm),which can be watched live on the Monastery’s YouTube channel. Three women, linked to different traditions, will take part. They will talk about the themes of this year’s conference (“Texts/Rituals/Transmission”) based on the contributions collected the day before. All three are internationally renowned thinkers in the study of their traditions and also in reflecting on the role and value of women within those traditions. The talk will be moderated and led by the journalist Txell Bonet (host of the conference).
LAMA GUELONGMA TSONDRU is responsible for the opening of the first Buddhism centre in Spain in 1977. She has worked hard to establish Buddhism, and especially the Karma Kagyu school, in our country. She has spent years in strict meditation retreat, and has received teachings from prominent masters. She was ordained as a nun by Tai Situ Rinpoché in 1987 and ordained as a guelongma in 1997. In 2001 she was invested with the title of Lama. She and three other women together founded Sakyadhita Spain, the association of Buddhist women, in 2015. She has also taken part in various interfaith dialogue groups. She runs the Samye Dzong centres in Spain, as well as the monastery and retreat centres at Santa Coloma de Farners, Girona.
TERESA FORCADES I VILA is a doctor, theologian and Benedictine nun at the Monastery of Sant Benet de Montserrat. Master of Divinity (Harvard, 1997), with a Doctorate in Medicine (UB, 2004) and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia (2007). A prolific writer in English, Catalan, Spanish and Italian, she is the author of many books, including La teologia feminista en la història (Ed. Fragmenta, 2007), Ser persona, avui (Ed. Abadia de Montserrat, 2011), Per amor a la justícia: Dorothy Day i Simone Weil (Ed. Viena, 2015), Els reptes del Papa Francesc (Ed. Viena, 2017) and Il Corpo, Gioia di Dio: la materia come spazio di incontro tra divino e humano (Ed. Gabrielli, 2019). Since 2011 she has taught two open courses per year on theological and medical subjects, with classes at her convent and online. She has also taught at Humboldt University of Berlin (2013-2014) and at the Universidad Iberoamericana of Mexico City (2018-2019). Since 2017 she has been the director of the Christian critical thinking magazine Iglesia Viva and she presents a weekly radio programme on Ràdio Estel, “Pages that have Captivated Me”. In September 2020 she became the director of the Sinclètica monastic school and she coordinates the international Master’s programme Knowledge, Art and Interiority.
ASMA LAMRABET is a haematologist. For many years, she worked as a volunteer doctor in public hospitals in Barcelona, Santiago de Chile and Mexico. She has engaged in the study and reflection on reformist thought in Islam and, in particular, on the subject of women, for many years. Her work is essentially focused on re-reading sacred texts from a reformist and feminist perspective, for which she travels around the world giving lectures and participating in conferences and seminars. From 2011 to 2018 she was director of the Research Centre on Women’s Issues in Islam at Rabita Mohammadia des Ulemas in Morocco. Since 2018 she has been Chair of Gender Studies at the Fundación Euroárabe of Granada, and from 2019 she has been a member of the scientific committee of the National Human Rights Council of Morocco. She has written various articles about Islam and women, and she has also written books including: Le Prophète de l’islam et les femmes de sa vie (Publicaciones de Junta Islámica, 2008); El Coran y las mujeres: una lectura de liberación (Icaria, 2010); Islam et femmes: les questions qui fâchent (Editions En toute lettres, 2017); Women and men in the Quran (Palgrave Publisher Washington, 2018); and her latest published book, El profeta y las mujeres (Editorial al-Buraq, 2020).
At the Reial Monestir de Santa Maria de Pedralbes, we will be in the presence of these three women, and we will listen to their wise and reflective words on the value of women in different religious and spiritual traditions, which will bring up the challenges, the victories. and the path still to be taken to showcase and value the role of women in different belief systems.
Follow their reflections and the talk “Reading, Doing and Transmitting as Women” live HERE. Those who attend, both in person and by watching live on YouTube, will be able to ask questions and make contributions.
Follow on the networks for updates: #FeRiDones