Cardinal Désiré Joseph Mercier presided over the original Malines Conversation Group in the early 1920s ~ 1916

Disambiguation: for the Malines Conversations Group (2013-), click here

“The Malines Conversations were a series of five informal ecumenical conversations held from 1921 to 1927 which explored possibilities for the corporate reunion between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.

“The impetus for the conversations emerged largely out of the friendship between the high church Anglican, Charles Lindley Wood, the Second Viscount of Halifax, and the French Roman Catholic priest Fernand Portal. Although the ultramontanist attitudes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain made direct talks between British Anglicans and British Roman Catholics infeasible, the Lambeth Appeal of 1920 opened doors to Roman Catholics on the continent. Cardinal Désiré Joseph Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, agreed to host the private ecumenical discussions desired by Lord Halifax and Abbé Portal. The conversations were held in the Belgian primatial see of Malines (the French name for the city of Mechelen) from 1921 to 1927 with tacit support from the Vatican and the archbishops of Canterbury and York, Randall Davidson and Cosmo Gordon Lang respectively.” [Wikipedia]

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