In an effort to forge closer links with the Roman Catholic Church, the Most Revd Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and president of the Anglican Communion, began a three-day visit to Rome yesterday, which will include a meeting with Pope John Paul II on October 4.

Archbishop Rowan is being accompanied by his wife, Mrs Jane Williams, and representatives of the Anglican Communion, including Canon James M Rosenthal and the Revd Canon Gregory Cameron. Also present as a member of the Archbishop’s official party is the Rt Revd Geoffrey Rowell, Bishop of the Diocese in Europe, who is responsible for overseeing the Anglican work in Rome.

The Archbishop of Canterbury will pay his first official visit to His Holiness Pope John Paul II in Rome between 3rd – 5th December 1996. He will stay as a guest of the English and Welsh Catholic Hierarchy at the Venerable English College in Rome. During the course of his visit he will have private conversations with His Holiness and other Curial Officials, and he and the Pope will join together in the celebration of Vespers at the Church of San Gregorio al Celio.

Pope Paul VI today received the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey, for the first official meeting between the heads of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches since the 16th century.

Several hours before the historic meeting in the Vatican, three Protestant demonstrators from Britain heckled the archbishop at a Holy Communion service in the All Saints Anglican church in Rome.

The three, two of them Baptist ministers, stood up at the completion of Ramsey’s sermon and exposed aprons emblazoned, “Archbishop a Traitor to Protestant Britain.”