INTERVIEW OF THE DAY
 

 
Christian Unity Stamped on the Soul: As Christians worldwide celebrate 100 years of the modern Ecumenical Movement, the Vatican’s very own Council for Promoting Christian Unity is marking its own anniversary: 50 years of study, dialogue and reflection so that one day “we may all be one”.

Bishop Brian Farrell is Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He has just returned from Edinburgh Scotland, where he took part in a four day summit to mark the 100^th anniversary of the 1910 World Missionary Conference. He spoke to us about the birth of the global ecumenical movement, the Second Vatican Council and the role of Pope John XXIII:

“Its interesting, we have just finished celebrating the anniversary of Edinburgh 1910, which is symbolically taken as the beginning of the modern Ecumenical movement and during the conference itself we remembered the foundation of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity which was set up in 1960 by Pope John XXIII in order to bring into the discussions of the Council his concerns for the unity of the Christians.
How it happened, is a beautiful story of the Pope wanting to bring observers from the other Christian Churches, the Orthodox and Protestant Churches to the Council. He needed a group of people that would commit themselves to visiting these churches and inviting them to the Council. This was the beginning of the Secretariat.
The Council then took a more formal structure and became instrumental in promoting the various questions that were particularly important to John XXIII and Cardinal Bea the first president of the Secretariat, such as; Christian Unity freedom of conscience the question of relations of the Catholic Church to the World Jewish Community These themes were deeply and at length debated during the Council and as I have often said one of the great untold stories is of how the Secretariat during the four years of the Council educated the bishops in the particular issues and questions that were being debated”.

Q. It was an extraordinary achievement, considering that many of these bishops had been educated in an almost exclusivist Catholic theology, how do you think this great turn around was made possible?


“Well of course the great ferment was already present in the great liturgical, biblical, theological renewal of the first part of the 20^th century, but it all came together if you wish in the discussions of the council, for this new enkindling of Catholic theology, the spark being the emphasis given by Pope John XXIII to a question of a renewal of the Church brining it into dialogue with the Christians of the day and his insistence on the question of Christian Unity which his experience of living in Eastern Europe had undoubtedly stamped on his soul”
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