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Talk of ARCIC at brief encounter of Pope and Primate
By Bill Bowder
The Church Times
4/28/2005
THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury met Pope Benedict XVI in Rome on Monday during an hour-long ecumenical audience.
The day after attending the Pope's inaugural mass in St Peter's Square, he led a 13-strong party of Anglican represenatives in attending the audience of about 100 people.
Dr Williams spoke with the Pope in German for a minute, during which they said they would pray for each other. Dr Williams and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O' Connor said that they hoped that the new Pope would visit England, although no date was set, a spokesman for Dr Williams said.
Dr Williams presented the Pope with a pectoral cross. He introduced his wife, Jane, as a theologian; the Primate of the West Indies, the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, who chairs the Inter Anglican Standing Committee on Ecumenical Relations; and the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali.
A spokesman for Dr Williams said that he expected that there would be "a fuller meeting" with the Pope at a later date.
Dr Nazir-Ali said on Tuesday that the Pope had met the Anglican delegation immediately after the Orthodox. "His first priority is relationships with the Orthodox, and the second is with the Anglicans." The Pope had spent about 15 minutes with the Anglicans. "He was very friendly towards us," Dr Nazir-Ali reported.
Dr Nazir-Ali said that the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) had been mentioned. He believed that there would now be a further meeting of the Commission, "which we could call ARCIC III", and which would meet next year to decide what it wanted to discuss.
Dr Nazir-Ali said that it was too soon to make a judgement about the new Pope. "We all know his work in the past, and that is both positive and negative."
Speaking on Sunday, the Pope said that the Church held the future of the world. "The Church is alive" he repeated five times in his sermon. "The Church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world, and therefore shows each of us the way towards the future."
He called for church unity, saying that the "fisherman's net" had been broken as it had "cast about for men and women to follow God". And he spoke of the "desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast."
The English Anglican-Roman Catholic committee (ARC), meeting in Edenbridge last weekend, said in a statement that Benedict's words at his first mass as "Bishop of Rome with the College of Cardinals" encouraged all those who "have been working for many years for unity among all Christians".
Representatives of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, meeting in Swansea last week, have welcomed Pope Benedict's "early assurance" that he will engage with other Christians and other faiths.
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