Today, on the vigil of the Feast day of Saint Patrick, the Church of Ireland Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop John McDowell, and the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, and the led the annual Saint Patrick’s lecture and discussion organised by Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council in the Market Place Theatre & Arts Centre, Armagh. The annual lecture and discussion reflects on how the witness of Saint Patrick speaks into our contemporary world. This year’s theme was: Saint Patrick as a model for reconciliation and peace. Following this event, the archbishops met with assembled media to deliver their Saint Patrick’s Day message and to express concern about the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

On 15 March a study group of Anglicans and Methodists led by Revd Dr Tim Macquiban from the Methodist Church in Britain and Revd Canon Jane Brooke from the Church of England was received at the office of the PCPCU by Monsignor Juan Usma Gómez, Head of the Western Section.

The visit was part of a three‒day program in Rome to explore how churches are promoting peace and reconciliation. The group was also accompanied by Revd Matthew Laferty, director of the Methodist Ecumenical Office Rome (MEOR).

Fulfilling a promise made years ago, Pope Francis this July will visit South Sudan, a country torn apart by a civil war. He will also visit the Democratic Republic of Congo. “At the invitation of their respective Heads of State and Bishops, His Holiness Pope Francis will make an Apostolic Journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2 to 5 July 2022, visiting the cities of Kinshasa and Goma and to South Sudan from 5 to 7 July, visiting Juba,” says the statement released by the Vatican’s press office a little after noon Rome time.

Francis had announced the trip himself, from the window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, following a Sunday Angelus in 2019. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s instability delayed the visit. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni did not clarify if Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, would be joining in the South Sudan leg of the visit, but the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury confirmed the Anglican leader would accompany the pontiff. The two have spoken about wanting to visit this African nation together. In fact, Welby spoke about this possibility Feb. 6. “God willing, sometime in the next few months, maybe year, we will go to see them in Juba, not Rome, and see what progress can be made,” Welby said. “That’s history,” Welby said of the likely trip that will mark the first time the two Christian leaders will travel together.

Next month’s meeting of Anglican Primates – the senior archbishops, moderators and Presiding Bishops from the 42 Churches of the Anglican Communion – will be held in London, England. The meeting had been planned to take place in Rome, Italy. However, Covid-related travel restrictions in Italy meant that around half of the church leaders would not be eligible to fully participate.

The meeting, called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby, will take the form of a spiritual retreat, with the church leaders praying and studying the Bible together. The Primates will also discuss the latest plans for the Lambeth Conference – the decennial meeting to which all Anglican bishops from around the world are invited. The next Lambeth Conference, postponed from 2020, will take place in Canterbury, England, in July and August this year.

The Archbishops’ Council has launched a consultation on a proposal to change the make-up of the body which nominates future Archbishops of Canterbury. The proposal would give the worldwide Anglican Communion a greater voice on the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) for the See of Canterbury. At present the entire Communion outside of England is represented by just one of the current 16 voting members, compared to six from the Diocese of Canterbury alone. The proposal would increase the Anglican Communion representatives to five while reducing the number of members from the Diocese to three. As at present, there would also be nine other members from the Church of England, including six elected by General Synod.

The idea originated from the Diocese of Canterbury itself where the Diocesan Synod agreed a motion asking the Archbishops’ Council to consider decreasing the representation of the Diocese of Canterbury on future CNCs for the See of Canterbury. The consultation, which will include key partners from across the Church of England and the Anglican Communion, will run until March 31. Responses will be collated in the spring with an expectation of a final proposal being put to the General Synod for a vote in July. If approved it would change the Synod’s standing orders, which govern CNCs. The General Synod, as part of the consultation, will also debate the proposal within the consultation document at its next meeting next month.

As in previous years, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity L’Osservatore Romano published a series of articles prepared by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on the ecumenical relations of the Holy See. The texts, which are published in Italian, offer an update on the ecumenical situation and on initiatives undertaken in 2021.

On Thursday 20 January 2022 the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity published a working paper on the consequences of the current pandemic for ecumenical relations.

Entitled “Ecumenism in a Time of Pandemic: From Crisis to Opportunity”, the text summarizes the outcomes of a survey undertaken in 2021 among the Bishops’ Conferences and Eastern Catholic Synods.

After analysing the opportunities of the pandemic for relations among Christians, as well as the negative impact, the document identifies a range of challenges that the ecumenical movement faces in a post‒pandemic world.

The document aims at offering an initial contribution to reflection in the hope that it may promote further discussion and stimulate dialogue at all levels with other Christians.

For the forthcoming 2022 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Cardinal Mario Grech and Cardinal Kurt Koch invite all Christians to pray for unity and to continue to journey together

In a joint letter sent on 28 October 2021 to all bishops responsible for ecumenism, Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Cardinal Grech, General Secretary of the Synod of the Bishops, offered suggestions aimed at implementing the ecumenical dimension of the synodal process in the local churches. “Both synodality and ecumenism are processes of walking together,” the two Cardinals wrote.

The 2022 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on the theme “We saw the star in the East, and we came to worship him” (Mt 2:2) prepared by the Middle East Council of Churches, offers a propitious occasion to pray with all Christians that the Synod will proceed in an ecumenical spirit.

Reflecting on the theme, both Cardinals affirm, “Like the Magi, Christians too journey together (synodos) guided by the same heavenly light and encountering the same worldly darkness. They too are called to worship Jesus together and open their treasures. Conscious of our need for the accompaniment and the many gifts of our brothers and sisters in Christ, we call on them to journey with us during these two years and we sincerely pray that Christ will lead us closer to Him and so to one another.”

Just before Christmas 1937, Monsignor Ronald Knox wrote a letter to the English Catholic periodical, The Tablet. Knox was the son of a Church of England bishop and had converted to Catholicism shortly after taking a brilliant First at the University of Oxford. He later became the first Catholic Chaplain to Oxford since the Reformation.

The letter arose from a remark that a friend of Knox’s had made, that she “wasn’t going to have her house turned upside down just because it was Christmas”. Thinking afterwards about what she had said, Knox wrote in his letter, “What is Christmas from start to finish but things being turned upside down?”

Even the days, continually darkening in the run–up Christmas, turn with the solstice and light begins to win again. Just when trees should be at their barest, lustrous evergreen branches are brought indoors and enhanced with lights and glitter. And just at a time (especially in the ancient world) when darkness was a cover for thieves in the night coming to burgle homes, in our modern recasting of the story, a genial old boy squeezes himself down the chimney and leaves gifts.

A group of Catholic and Anglican theologians has publicly called on the Vatican to review and overturn a papal document from 1896 that declared Anglican ordinations “absolutely null and utterly void.” “Where we once walked apart, we now walk together in friendship and love,” wrote members of the Malines Conversations Group after tracing the history of ecumenical agreements between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion and, especially, reviewing examples of collaboration and gestures of recognition.

The judgment made by Pope Leo XIII in his apostolic letter “Apostolicae Curae” in 1896 “does not accord with the reality into which the Spirit has led us now,” said members of the group, which is an informal Catholic-Anglican dialogue that began in 2013. Members of the group, who are not appointed to represent their churches but keep their respective ecumenical offices informed of their studies and discussions, presented their document Dec. 15 at Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. The 27-page document is titled, “Sorores in Spe — Sisters in Hope of the Resurrection: A Fresh Response to the Condemnation of Anglican Orders.”

The members of the Malines Conversations Group are honoured to invite you to the presentation of their new document:

SORORES IN SPE – Sisters in Hope of the Resurrection: A Fresh Response to the Condemnation of Anglican Orders (1896)

during an ecumenical seminar at the Angelicum’s Institute for Ecumenical Studies, Rome, Wednesday, 15 December 2021, 15:00-16:00, in presence at Aula 11 of the Angelicum or in direct streaming on Angelicum YouTube.

The legacy of the Malines Conversations — a series of private conversations on the unity of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, held in Belgium from 1921 to 1927 — is “alive and important” today, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams told an audience in York Minster this week.

The dialogue was the initiative of two friends, Charles Lindley Wood, the 2nd Viscount Halifax, the leading Anglo-Catholic layman of his day, and the Abbé Fernand Portal, and took place at the invitation of the Archbishop of Malines, Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier.

At a service on Monday to mark the centenary, Lord Williams noted their dismissal by some, including Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham, who had described it as “predictably futile: a few unrepresentative Anglicans meet a few unrepresentative Roman Catholics. The Vatican, always courtly and polite, makes friendly noises and does absolutely nothing and the C of E likewise.”

In fact, Lord Williams said, the conversations had “kept open two very important windows. Within the Roman Catholic Church, it had allowed some vastly distinguished historical theologians … to pursue, without instantly being condemned for modernism, some urgent questions about the nature of the history of Christian thinking.” This had gone on to shape the Second Vatican Council.

The Anglican Communion Primates will meet online on Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 November, for consultation, discussion and prayer.

The Primates will meet via video conference. They will reflect on their ministries and discuss a range of issues for the church and for the world, including COVID-19; COP26; ministry to refugees; and the forthcoming Lambeth Conference.

The Primates’ Meeting is one of Anglicanism’s four “Instruments of Communion” and helps to bind together the “independent but inter-dependent” provinces.

The last Primates’ Meeting was also held virtually, in November 2020. But plans are in place for an in-person Primates’ Meeting in March 2022.

The leaders of the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican communions of churches have issued a rare joint statement on the need to protect creation. The message was released yesterday (Tuesday) during the Season of Creation, which runs from runs from 1 September – designated as the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation – to 4 October – the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. It looks ahead to the UN climate change conference taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.

The Most Revd John McDowell, Archbishop of Armagh and [Anglican] Primate of All Ireland, has issued the following statement on the UK Government’s planned approach to the Legacy of the Troubles:

‘The announcement yesterday in the House of Commons of the path that the Government intends to follow in relation to Legacy issues in Northern Ireland will have created further heartbreak, frustration and anger for victims of the Troubles. The degree of suffering endured by victims over the years is not something that can be moved on from. It needs to be acknowledged in the full variety of its expression, and dealt with over the long term.

‘Failure to deal with Legacy has probably been the biggest political and societal failing since the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. The one principle which all involved have been agreed on is that a general amnesty would be a morally empty response. Regardless of the name it goes under, a general amnesty is what the Government of the United Kingdom is now planning to put in place.

The symposium “The Malines Conversations 100 Years On” was held at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium to the Holy See on 11 June 2021, co–hosted by the Belgian and British Ambassadors to the Holy See, Patrick Renault and Sally Axworthy, respectively, to mark the 100th anniversary to be celebrated in Malines later in the year.

In his opening speech at the first Malines Conversations, on the 6^th of December 1921, Cardinal Mercier shared that all of those present for the occasion, had agreed to seek the Lord and asked to make their souls live. He also invited those present to invoke the grace of the Holy Spirit. This moment of devotion needs to be valued as we celebrate the intentions of those who were willing to take the risks in uncharted territory they were called to enter. In my opinion, these conversations were built on the foundation of a spirit of faith.

On the invitation of Archbishop Ian Ernest, Representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, Cardinal Kurt Koch delivered the homily on 25 May at the weekly Tuesday Eucharist of the Anglican Centre in Rome. Archbishop Ernest presided at the liturgy and welcomed Cardinal Koch and other ecumenical guests. The homily reflected on the gospel of the day in which Jesus reassures Peter that no one leaves everything for the sake of the gospel without being repaid a hundred times over “houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and property”. Cardinal Koch noted that fathers were not included in the list, explaining that in the new community of Jesus there is no longer the human father. “Entering into this community of Jesus’ followers” the Cardinal explained, “means moving out of the civic community with the patriarch at the centre to be integrated into a new community, with God alone at the centre. Hence the community of disciples only lives in the spirit of Jesus when they don’t just proclaim God’s word but are themselves a place where God lives.” Noting the feast of Saint Bede, the Cardinal observed how Bede put Christ at the centre in his exegesis and in his history; it was due to Bede, after all, that we date human history from the birth of Jesus, God’s incarnation.

The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was, for the second consecutive year, unable to meet in plenary due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Instead, the Commission met in two webinars on 10 and 12 May in which they considered the forthcoming study document of the Faith and Order Commission, Churches and Moral Discernment: Facilitating Dialogue to Build Koinonia. This document was presented jointly by Professor Myriam Wijlens, Co-chair of the study group and consultant of ARCIC, and Dr David Kirchhoffer, the principal drafter of the text. Members considered how the work, and specifically the “Tool” for Moral Discernment developed in the document, could be integrated with ARCIC’s own work.

The Commission is currently examining the question of how the Church in communion discerns right ethical teaching and, in continuity with its previous agreed statement, Walking Together on the Way, is using Receptive Ecumenism to examine this question. The Commission decided to meet for two further webinars later in the year in which it will return to previous case studies presented in its Jerusalem 2019 plenary in the light of the work of the Faith and Order study.

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity mourns the death on 10 April 2021 of Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, President of the Council from 1989–2001.

The term of office of Cardinal Cassidy was deeply inspired by the Encyclical Letter Ut unum sint (1995) of Pope John Paul II. Among many highlights, he promoted the resumption of the interrupted theological dialogue with the Orthodox Church, resulting in the publication of the Balamand Document (1993). He was also instrumental in the publication of the Common Christological Declaration (1994) between Pope John Paul II and Catholicos Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV of the Assyrian Church of the East, as well as the Christological declarations with the Armenian Catholicoi Karekin I (1996) and Aram I (1997). In 1999, on behalf of the Catholic Church, he signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with the Lutheran World Federation. He also oversaw the publication of the updated Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism (1993) and of The Ecumenical Dimension in the Formation of Those Engaged in Pastoral Work (1997).

Cardinal Cassidy accompanied Pope John Paul II on many apostolic visits, among them the 1999 visit to Romania in which he met with Patriarch Teoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church, to Mount Sinai in 2000, and in 2001 a Jubilee Pilgrimage “in the footsteps of Saint Paul” including historical visits to Athens and Damascus. In the last years of his presidency, Cardinal Cassidy was highly committed to the ecumenical dimension of the events of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000.