The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Pope Francis have commissioned 19 pairs of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops from across the world to take part in united mission in their local areas. The bishops, selected by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) were “sent out” for mission together by the Pope and Archbishop from the same church where Pope Gregory sent Saint Augustine to evangelise the English in the sixth Century. “Fourteen centuries ago Pope Gregory sent the servant of God, Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, and his companions, from this holy place, to preach the joyful message of the Word of God,” Pope Francis told the bishops. “Today we send you, dear brothers, servants of God, with this same joyful message of his everlasting kingdom.”

Archbishop Justin Welby told them: “Our Saviour commissioned his disciples saying, ‘Peace be with you’. We too, send you out with his peace, a peace only he can give. “May his peace bring freedom to those who are captive and oppressed, and may his peace bind into greater unity the people he has chosen as his own.” The commissioning and sending out came in the setting of a Vespers service, led jointly by Pope Francis and Archbishop Welby, at the Church of Saint Gregory on the Caelian Hill in Rome.

Pulpit swaps, shared retreats, joint action on social issues and regular meetings between clergy are just some of the ideas for local expressions of unity between Anglicans and Roman Catholics taking shape during an ecumenical summit in Canterbury and Rome. This afternoon, during a service in the monastery church of San Gregorio al Cielo, Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will commission 19 pairs of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops to implement local expressions of unity in their dioceses around the world. The commissioning of the 19-pairs of bishops has been organised by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) as part of a week-long ecumenical summit marking the 50th anniversary of the first public meeting between a Pope and an Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation.

The summit, which began at the weekend in Canterbury Cathedral and is continuing now in the Vatican, will also mark the 50th anniversary of the Anglican Centre in Rome. “I have been deeply moved by what has been happening,” the Anglican Bishop of Sialkot in Pakistan, the Rt Revd Alwin Samuel, said. “To see Roman Catholics celebrating the Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral was a miracle. “It is an answer to Jesus’ prayer that we may be one.”

The historic first public meeting between a Pope and an Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation will be celebrated by the current Pope and Archbishop when they meet next week in Rome, some 50 years on from the first meeting. It was a milestone in ecumenical relations when Archbishop Michael Ramsey paid an official visit to Pope Paul VI in 1966. The visit sent shockwaves around the world when Pope Paul presented Archbishop Ramsey with his episcopal ring. Next week’s meeting between Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin will be the third meeting between the pair – a sign of how normal the relationship between the two churches has become.

The relationship between the two churches had been thawing in advance of the 1966 meeting. In 1960 Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher paid a private visit to Pope John XXIII in Rome; and the following year Canon Bernard Pawley was appointed as the Archbishops of Canterbury’s and York’s representative to the Holy See. Anglicans were invited to observe the Second Vatican Council, when it met from 1962 to 1965; and it was felt that “a formal line of contact needed to be put in place.”

‘ARCIC & IARCCUM: 50 years of walking together in faith’ is a symposium to be held Wednesday, 5 October 2016 at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Planned in conjunction with the IARCCUM pilgrimage, this symposium will be an opportunity to explore in detail some of the achievements of 50 years of dialogue between Anglicans and Roman Catholics.

Thirty-six IARCCUM Anglican and Catholic bishops, representing 19 different regions where Anglicans and Catholics live side by side in significant numbers, will meet in Canterbury and Rome for a summit meeting in October of this year. The bishops will arrive in Canterbury for the first leg of their meeting on 30th September. They will be staying at the Lodge in Canterbury Cathedral, will take part in the liturgical life of the Cathedral, and will make a pilgrim visit to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket, where Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Robert Runcie prayed together. The purpose of the meeting will be to discover new ways where, on the basis of the agreed statements of ARCIC, Catholics and Anglicans can give greater witness to their common faith, and particularly how they can collaborate in mission to the world. The meeting will begin by listening to the bishops’ own pastoral challenges. The bishops will also reflect on the previous documents of IARCCUM, and particularly, Growing Together in Unity and Mission. They will be accompanied by Dr Anna Rowlands of Durham University, who will be present at all the bishops’ discussions and will resource the meeting from her expertise in Catholic and Anglican Social Theology.

After nearly 50 years of discourse between the Catholic and Anglican communions, the official dialogue body wants to fine-tune how it studies the differences and similarities between two churches which both call themselves Catholic.

“ARCIC III hasn’t proved itself yet,” Sir David Moxon, Anglican co-chair of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, told The Catholic Register following an ecumenical evensong on Pentecost Sunday.

This third stage of the dialogue has been meeting since 2011, but has yet to publish a major document. It is currently studying how the Church arrives at moral teaching.

The official dialogue sponsored by the Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury is meeting in Toronto until May 18, when a concluding communique is expected from the meeting of 22 bishops, theologians and support staff. It is the first time the body has met in Canada and, to the knowledge of the participants, the first time in 50 years that ARCIC has met during Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit first revealed the global unity of the Christian message expressed in the diversity of languages from around the world.

Every year those who hold official positions in the Anglican Communion with regard to Roman Catholic relations meet with their counterparts in the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) for what are termed “the Informal Talks”. These are sessions when information is shared about developments in each Communion (including our ecumenical relations with other partners) and the progress in the dialogue between us is monitored and assessed.

I participate in these “Informal Talks” in my role as the Anglican Co-Chairman of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Communion for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) along with the Anglican Co-Chairman of ARCIC, who also happens to be the Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, Archbishop Sir David Moxon. The Anglican Communion’s Director of Unity, Faith and Order, the Revd Canon Dr Alyson Barnett-Cowan attends, as well as the Secretary General of the Communion, the Revd Canon Dr Kenneth Kearon. The Roman Catholic Church fields our opposite numbers.

At our recent sessions Canon Kearon, who has recently been elected Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe in his home Church of Ireland, was given a gift by Bishop Brian Farrell, the Secretary of the PCPCU. It was an Episcopal ring. Canon Kearon said of this moving gesture, “This is both a personal gift from someone who has become a good friend during our annual meetings and other conversations, and also symbolic of the deep relationships which now exist between our two Communions, which are now being expressed at every level of our Churches”.

It was a gesture reminiscent of the visit of Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey to Pope Paul VI in 1966. At that time, the Pope gave an Episcopal ring to the Archbishop. That historic meeting led to the setting up of the Anglican Centre in Rome and to the inauguration of the official dialogue between the two Communions.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby arrives in Rome on Saturday for a two day visit that will culminate on Monday in a meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. On Sunday the Anglican leader will preach at Vespers at the church of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill, visit the two Anglican churches here in Rome and take part in a prayer service with the St Egidio community at St Bartholomew’s on the Tiber Island. During his packed programme, the Archbishop will also launch a new website for the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), showcasing ways in which members of the two communions are increasingly worshipping, working and witnessing side by side.

To find out more, Philippa Hitchen spoke with Canadian bishop Donald Bolen, co-chair of IARCCUM and Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, director of Unity, Faith and Order at the Anglican Communion office in London and co-secretary of IARCCUM.

Church unity hasn’t happened yet, but Catholics and Anglicans have a new list of concrete suggestions for ways to bring the two churches closer.

Seven years after nine pairs of Catholic and Anglican bishops from around the world met in Mississauga, Ont., to talk and pray over 35 years of official dialogue, a joint commission of Catholic and Anglican bishops has produced a 42-page report which aims “to bridge the gap between the elements of faith we hold in common and the tangible expression of that shared belief in our ecclesial lives.”

Honest analysis can bolster bonds of communion

In years past, since the close of the Second Vatican Council, relations between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion have focussed on theological dialogue and on seeking appropriate means to engage together in prayer, witness and mission.

During the past year the focus has shifted, as the Anglican Communion is in the midst of a major discernment process, attempting to address internal tensions which threaten to divide it.

The decisions which Anglicans will make over the coming months will not only set a course for the Anglican Communion, but will also significantly shape Anglican-Catholic relations.

Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion has received its first setback since the American Anglicans consecrated an actively gay bishop last month. The Vatican said on Tuesday it was suspending a meeting in the United States scheduled for February which had intended to work on a common statement of faith between Catholics and Anglicans. The meeting “would have to be put on hold” because of “ecclesiological concerns” raised by “recent developments within the Anglican Communion,” according to a statement by the Vatican’s Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, whose president is Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Advent is for Christians a season of hope and anticipation that precedes Christmas. But this year it is a time of splintered hopes for Seattle’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Alex Brunett.

Brunett has made ecumenical dialogue the touchstone of his 45 years as a Catholic clergyman.

He once was host for Jewish rabbis at a service at the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Mich., a church that was base for the 1930s anti-Semitic “radio priest” Father Charles Coughlin.

On Tuesday, November 25, 2003, Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, met with the Reverend Canon John L. Peterson, Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council, at the offices of the Pontifical Council.

At the meeting the future of Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue was discussed, especially in the light of recent developments within the life of the Anglican Communion.

As a result of the conversation, it was decided that the next plenary session of the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) and its work towards the publication and reception of a Common Statement of Faith would have to be put on hold in the light of ecclesiological concerns raised as a consequence of these events. At the same time, the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church remain committed to continuing their dialogue, and agree that the work of the sub-committees of the Commission would proceed.

On Tuesday 25 November 2003, Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, met with the Reverend Canon John L. Peterson, Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council, at the offices of the Pontifical Council. At the meeting the future of Anglican Roman Catholic dialogue was discussed, especially in the light of recent developments within the life of the Anglican Communion.

The Pope, His Holiness John Paul II sent a message of greeting to the historic May 2000 gathering of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops in Mississauga, Toronto, Canada. On the eve of his 80th birthday, the Pope expressed his hope that the meeting would “bear lasting fruit” and hasten unity of the two churches.

“For more than 30 years the Anglican and the Catholic Church have been on a journey towards the restoration of unity,” said the Pope in a statement read by Cardinal Edward Cassidy to 2,000 worshippers in St Michael’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Toronto. “In some places there have been very positive developments … in other places we are not so far along the road [and] new and serious obstacles have slowed our progress. I pray that the spiritual bonds that have always lifted Catholics and Anglicans will be strengthened and deepened even further.”

Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops, paired from thirteen regions around the world, have begun their meeting in Canada in which they are reviewing and evaluating the accomplishment of thirty years of ecumenical relationship between Anglicans and Catholics in their areas. The pairs of bishops come from New Zealand, Canada, England, United States, Ireland, India, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Southern Africa, Uganda, Australia, Brazil and the West Indies.

The bishops are gathered in private session at the Queen of Apostles Renewal Centre near Toronto, Ontario, under the joint chairmanship of Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Their first day has begun with a morning of prayer and scriptural reflection. The following days will begin and end with common prayer.

Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops from thirteen regions around the world are to gather in Canada May 14-20 to review and evaluate the accomplishment of thirty years of ecumenical dialogue between the two traditions and to reflect on how the special relationship between them has been developing in different parts of the world.

This high level meeting is happening at a time when Anglicans and Roman Catholics around the world are exploring the possibilities for further steps toward visible unity.