Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins in Rome

( Jan. 18, 2012) Christian Churches worldwide began their annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on Wednesday. The theme for this year is “We all will be changed by the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The annual week is organised by Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches. The traditional period for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is 18-25 January. Those dates were proposed for the first observance of the “Church Unity Octave” in 1908, to cover the days between the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, and therefore have a symbolic significance. The theme of this year’s Week for Christian Unity is concerned with the transformative power of faith in Christ, particularly in relation to praying for the visible unity among Christian churches.
On Jan. 25^th, the concluding day of this week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Pope Benedict XVI will preside over Vespers in Rome’s St. Paul’s Basilica outside the Walls. The material and resources for this Week has been prepared by a group composed of representatives of Poland’s Catholic Church and the Ecumenical Council.