DIALOGUE GOES ON, DESPITE DIFFICULTIES

“The road to a full communion, as experienced by our Churches in the first millennium, has been covered through the dialogue of love and truth and goes on by the Grace of God, despite some occasional difficulties”. With words of gratitude and affection, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, received in Istanbul this morning the Vatican delegation that arrived for the celebrations of Saint Andrew’s Day, with a message from the Pope. The presence of Benedict XVI’s delegates – Bartholomew I said – is “confirmation of their wish to remove the impediments built up over a millennium and reach the fullness of communion. We attach great symbolic meaning to your presence here, since it also reveals, very formally, the wish of the Most Holy Church of Rome to do all it can to find our unity again in the same faith and sacramental communion, according to the will of He who has called us to unity for the world to believe". “It is with great attention and unceasing prayer – the Patriarch went on – that we follow the process of official theological dialogue between our two Churches”, which is now embarking into the examination of ecclesiological issues, such as “the issue of primacy in general and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in particular”.
© SIR - nov 30th, 2009