Pope Francis receives Archbishop of Canterbury (Full texts)
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Friday met with the new Archbishop of Canterbury,
Justin Welby. It was the first meeting between the two.
Below, please
find the complete translation of Pope Francis' discourse at the meeting, followed
by the complete text of Archbishop Welby's address:
Your Grace, Dear
Friends,
On the happy occasion of our first meeting, I make my own the words
of Pope Paul VI, when he addressed Archbishop Michael Ramsey during his historic visit
in 1966: “Your steps have not brought you to a foreign dwelling ... we are pleased
to open the doors to you, and with the doors, our heart, pleased and honoured as we
are ... to welcome you ‘not as a guest or a stranger, but as a fellow citizen of the
Saints and the Family of God’” (cf. Eph 2:19-20).
I know that during Your Grace’s
installation in Canterbury Cathedral you remembered in prayer the new Bishop of Rome.
I am deeply grateful to you – and since we began our respective ministries within
days of each other, I think we will always have a particular reason to support one
another in prayer.
The history of relations between the Church of England and
the Catholic Church is long and complex, and not without pain. Recent decades, however,
have been marked by a journey of rapprochement and fraternity, and for this we give
heartfelt thanks to God. This journey has been brought about both via theological
dialogue, through the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission,
and via the growth of cordial relations at every level through shared daily lives
in a spirit of profound mutual respect and sincere cooperation. In this regard, I
am very pleased to welcome alongside you Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.
These firm bonds of friendship have enabled us to remain on course even when difficulties
have arisen in our theological dialogue that were greater than we could have foreseen
at the start of our journey.
I am grateful, too, for the sincere efforts the
Church of England has made to understand the reasons that led my Predecessor, Pope
Benedict XVI, to provide a canonical structure able to respond to the wishes of those
groups of Anglicans who have asked to be received collectively into the Catholic Church:
I am sure this will enable the spiritual, liturgical and pastoral traditions that
form the Anglican patrimony to be better known and appreciated in the Catholic world.
Today’s
meeting is an opportunity to remind ourselves that the search for unity among Christians
is prompted not by practical considerations, but by the will of the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, who made us his brothers and sisters, children of the One Father. Hence
the prayer that we make today is of fundamental importance.
This prayer gives
a fresh impulse to our daily efforts to grow towards unity, which are concretely expressed
in our cooperation in various areas of daily life. Particularly important among these
is our witness to the reference to God and the promotion of Christian values in a
world that seems at times to call into question some of the foundations of society,
such as respect for the sacredness of human life or the importance of the institution
of the family built on marriage, a value that you yourself have had occasion to recall
recently.
Then there is the effort to achieve greater social justice, to build
an economic system that is at the service of man and promotes the common good. Among
our tasks as witnesses to the love of Christ is that of giving a voice to the cry
of the poor, so that they are not abandoned to the laws of an economy that seems at
times to treat people as mere consumers.
I know that Your Grace is especially
sensitive to all these questions, in which we share many ideas, and I am also aware
of your commitment to foster reconciliation and resolution of conflicts between nations.
In this regard, together with Archbishop Nichols, you have urged the authorities to
find a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict such as would guarantee the security
of the entire population, including the minorities, not least among whom are the ancient
local Christian communities. As you yourself have observed, we Christians bring peace
and grace as a treasure to be offered to the world, but these gifts can bear fruit
only when Christians live and work together in harmony. This makes it easier to contribute
to building relations of respect and peaceful coexistence with those who belong to
other religious traditions, and with non-believers.
The unity we so earnestly
long for is a gift that comes from above and it is rooted in our communion of love
with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As Christ himself promised, “where
two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20).
Let us travel the path towards unity, fraternally united in charity and with Jesus
Christ as our constant point of reference. In our worship of Jesus Christ we will
find the foundation and raison d’être of our journey. May the merciful Father hear
and grant the prayers that we make to him together. Let us place all our hope in
him who “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20).
Below,
please find the complete text of Archbishop Justin Welby’s address to Pope Francis,
which was delivered in English:
Your Holiness, Dear Friends:
I
am full of love and gratitude to be here. In the last few days we have been remembering
the death of Blessed Pope John XXIII in the midst of the Second Vatican Council.
At the Requiem said at Lambeth Palace fifty years ago this weekend by Archbishop Michael
Ramsey, my much-loved predecessor said of him: ‘Pope John has shown us again the
power of being, by being a man who touches human hearts with charity. So there has
come to many a new longing for the unity of all Christians, and a new knowledge that
however long the road may be, charity already makes all the difference to it.’
Having
for many years found inspiration in the great corpus of Catholic social teaching,
and worked on its implications with Catholic groups; having spent retreats in new
orders of the Church in France, and being accompanied by the Prior of another new
order; I do indeed feel that I am (in the words of Pope Paul VI to Archbishop Michael)
coming to a place where I can feel myself at home. Your Holiness, we are called
by the Holy Spirit of God, through our fraternal love, to continue the work that has
been the precious gift to popes and archbishops of Canterbury for these past fifty
years, and of which this famous ring is the enduring token. I pray that the nearness
of our two inaugurations may serve the reconciliation of the world and the Church.
As
you have stressed, we must promote the fruits of our dialogue; and, with our fellow
bishops, we must give expression to our unity in faith through prayer and evangelisation.
It is only as the world sees Christians growing visibly in unity that it will accept
through us the divine message of peace and reconciliation.
However, the journey
is testing and we cannot be unaware that differences exist about how we bring the
Christian faith to bear on the challenges thrown up by modern society. But our ‘goal
is great enough to justify the effort of the journey’ (Benedict XVI, Spe salvi 1),
and we can trust in the prayer of Christ, ‘ut omnes unum sint’ (Jn 17.21). A firm
foundation of friendship will enable us to be hopeful in speaking to one another about
those differences, to bear one another’s burdens, and to be open to sharing the discernment
of a way forward that is faithful to the mind of Christ pressed upon us as disciples.
That
way forward must reflect the self-giving love of Christ, our bearing of his Cross,
and our dying to ourselves so as to live with Christ, which will show itself in hospitality
and love for the poor. We must love those who seek to oppose us, and love above all
those tossed aside—even whole nations—by the present crises around the world. Also,
even as we speak, our brothers and sisters in Christ suffer terribly from violence,
oppression and war, from bad government and unjust economic systems. If we are not
their advocates in the name of Christ, who will be?
Your Holiness, dear brother,
I assure you of the love, respect and prayer of the bishops, clergy and people of
the Anglican Communion.