Fraternal Visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace (London Borough
of Richmond, 17 September 2010)
Visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury Address of the Holy Father
17 September
2010
Your Grace, It is a pleasure for me to be able to return the courtesy
of the visits you have made to me in Rome by a fraternal visit to you here in your
official residence. I thank you for your invitation and for the hospitality that
you have so generously provided. I greet too the Anglican Bishops gathered here from
different parts of the United Kingdom, my brother Bishops from the Catholic Dioceses
of England, Wales and Scotland, and the ecumenical advisers who are present. You
have spoken, Your Grace, of the historic meeting that took place, almost thirty years
ago, between two of our predecessors – Pope John Paul the Second and Archbishop Robert
Runcie – in Canterbury Cathedral. There, in the very place where Saint Thomas of
Canterbury bore witness to Christ by the shedding of his blood, they prayed together
for the gift of unity among the followers of Christ. We continue today to pray for
that gift, knowing that the unity Christ willed for his disciples will only come about
in answer to prayer, through the action of the Holy Spirit, who ceaselessly renews
the Church and guides her into the fullness of truth. It is not my intention
today to speak of the difficulties that the ecumenical path has encountered and continues
to encounter. Those difficulties are well known to everyone here. Rather, I wish
to join you in giving thanks for the deep friendship that has grown between us and
for the remarkable progress that has been made in so many areas of dialogue during
the forty years that have elapsed since the Anglican-Roman Catholic International
Commission began its work. Let us entrust the fruits of that work to the Lord of
the harvest, confident that he will bless our friendship with further significant
growth. The context in which dialogue takes place between the Anglican Communion
and the Catholic Church has evolved in dramatic ways since the private meeting between
Pope John XXIII and Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher in 1960. On the one hand, the surrounding
culture is growing ever more distant from its Christian roots, despite a deep and
widespread hunger for spiritual nourishment. On the other hand, the increasingly
multicultural dimension of society, particularly marked in this country, brings with
it the opportunity to encounter other religions. For us Christians this opens up
the possibility of exploring, together with members of other religious traditions,
ways of bearing witness to the transcendent dimension of the human person and the
universal call to holiness, leading to the practice of virtue in our personal and
social lives. Ecumenical cooperation in this task remains essential, and will surely
bear fruit in promoting peace and harmony in a world that so often seems at risk of
fragmentation. At the same time, we Christians must never hesitate to proclaim
our faith in the uniqueness of the salvation won for us by Christ, and to explore
together a deeper understanding of the means he has placed at our disposal for attaining
that salvation. God “wants all to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth”
(1 Tim 2:4), and that truth is nothing other than Jesus Christ, eternal Son of the
Father, who has reconciled all things in himself by the power of his Cross. In fidelity
to the Lord’s will, as expressed in that passage from Saint Paul’s First Letter to
Timothy, we recognize that the Church is called to be inclusive, yet never at the
expense of Christian truth. Herein lies the dilemma facing all who are genuinely
committed to the ecumenical journey. In the figure of John Henry Newman, who is
to be beatified on Sunday, we celebrate a churchman whose ecclesial vision was nurtured
by his Anglican background and matured during his many years of ordained ministry
in the Church of England. He can teach us the virtues that ecumenism demands: on
the one hand, he was moved to follow his conscience, even at great personal cost;
and on the other hand, the warmth of his continued friendship with his former colleagues,
led him to explore with them, in a truly eirenical spirit, the questions on which
they differed, driven by a deep longing for unity in faith. Your Grace, in that same
spirit of friendship, let us renew our determination to pursue the goal of unity in
faith, hope, and love, in accordance with the will of our one Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. With these sentiments, I take my leave of you. May the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you
all (2 Cor 13:13).