Raimon Panikkar

Raimon Panikkar-Alemany
Born Raimundo Pannikar-Alemany
November 3, 1918(1918-11-03)
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Died August 26, 2010(2010-08-26) (aged 91)
Tavertet, Catalonia, Spain
Occupation Roman Catholic priest, theologian, scholar

Raimon Panikkar-Alemany (November 3, 1918 – August 26, 2010[1]) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of inter-religious dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.

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Early life and education

Raimundo Pannikar was born as the son of a Spanish Roman Catholic mother and a Hindu Indian father in Barcelona.[2] His mother was well-educated and from the Catalan bourgeoisie. His father belonged to an upper caste Malabar Nair family from South India. Panikkar's father was a freedom fighter during British colonial rule in India and escaped from Britain and married into a Catalan family. Panikkar's father studied in England and was the representative of a German chemical company in Barcelona.

Educated at a Jesuit school, Panikkar studied chemistry and philosophy at the universities of Barcelona, Bonn and Madrid, and Catholic Theology in Madrid and Rome. He earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Madrid in 1946 and a doctorate in chemistry in 1958.[3] He earned a third doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 1961.[3]He compared St. Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy with the eighth-century Hindu philosopher Ādi Śańkara's Interpretation of the Brahma Sutras.[3]

Career

He entered the Opus Dei organization in 1940. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1946, and was a professor of philosophy at the University of Madrid.[3] He made his first trip to India in 1954 where he studied Indian philosophy and religion at the University of Mysore and Banaras Hindu University, where he met several Western monks seeking Eastern forms for the expression of their Christian beliefs.[3] "I left Europe [for India] as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be Christian," he later wrote.[3][2] While in Jerusalem during 1962, he was summoned to Rome by Opus Dei founder and director, Saint Josemaría Escrivá, who expelled him after a brief trial where he was charged with disobedience to the organization. [4]He became a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School. in 1966 and a professor of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara in 1972.[3] For many years he taught in the spring and spent the rest of the year doing research in India.[3] In 1987 he moved to Tavertet, in the hills north of Barcelona, where he founded the Raimon Panikkar Vivarium Foundation, a center for intercultural studies.[3]

He last lived in Tavertet, in the mountains of Catalonia outside Barcelona. Panikkar authored more than 40 books and 900 articles. His complete works are being published in Italian. His 1989 Gifford Lectures are being published in English by Orbis.

In a statement from his residence in Tavertet dated January 26, 2010 he wrote: "Dear Friends . . . I would like to communicate with you that I believe the moment has come, (put off time and again), to withdraw from all public activity, both the direct and the intellectual participation, to which I have dedicated all my life as a way of sharing my reflections. I will continue to be close to you in a deeper way, through silence and prayer, and in the same way I would ask you to be close to me in this last period of my existence. You have often heard me say that a person is a knot in a network of relationships; in taking my leave from you I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for having enriched me with the relationship I have had with each of you. I am also grateful to all of those who, either in person or through association, continue working to spread my message and the sharing of my ideals, even without me. Thankful for the gift of life which is only such if lived in communion with others: it is with this spirit that I have lived out my ministry."

Works

By Panikkar

About Panikkar

References

  1. ^ Biodata
  2. ^ a b Time, September 20, 2010, p.26.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i The New York Times, September 6, 2010, p.A20.
  4. ^ "Raimon Panikkar", Raffaele Luise, San Paolo, Milan, 2011, p. 25-32

External links