Your All-Holiness!
Grace and peace in our Lord Jesus Christ be with you!
It is with great joy that I greet the Holy Church of Constantinople and you, her Bishop, your All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch. I convey to you the blessing and the greetings of the Church of Rome and her Bishop for the patronal feast of St. Andrew, the first-called of the Apostles and the brother of Peter, the first of the Apostles. By means of our Delegation from the See of Peter to this Holy See of Andrew, Peter and Andrew embrace each other and exchange their brotherly love.
Our Delegation expresses thanks to God and to Your Holiness for your kind invitation and generous hospitality. Our visit expresses the deepened relations, which have grown between us in the last decades. Last year we met during the voyage through the Baltic Sea organized by you in order to draw attention to the need to defend the beauty and dignity of God’s creation. In May, in Rome, we had the joy of hosting a meeting of theological experts, including representatives of this Patriarchal See, to discuss one of the most difficult issues before our Churches, the question of the exercise of the Petrine ministry. For the year to come, we look forward, with God’s grace, to Your Holiness’ visit to Rome for the inauguration of the church which His Holiness Pope John Paul II has offered for the liturgical use and, as it were, the home in that city of the Greek Orthodox community.
We can therefore praise God for the grace of an ever more visible mutual friendship, love and communion between Rome and Constantinople. (This is the result of all that God has allowed our Churches to do together since the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenogoras in Jerusalem in 1964 and the proclamation that same year of the Decree of Ecumenism, “Unitatis redintegratio” of the Second Vatican Council. We look forward next year to commemorating those important events).
To this sense of joy and thanksgiving, I must add the expression of my deep sadness and at the criminal acts of terrorism, which occurred in this city only one week ago. How can we not be profoundly shocked by such violent outbursts of ethnic hatred and anti-Semitism? As Christians we plead for mutual respect between the followers of different religions, especially between the followers of the three Abrahamic religions: Jews, Christians and Moslems. We venerate and adore the one God, the all-merciful Father of all humanity. For all the children of Abraham peace is the name of God, whereas violence is a violation of God’s holiness and a crime against human dignity. Because every human being is created in the likeness of God, we have a sacred duty to speak up for human rights, religious freedom, social justice for everyone without exception. “Opus iustitiae pax”, peace is the work of justice whereas violence leads only to further violence. Peace based on justice for all sides is our constant prayer, particularly to the Holy Land, cherished by all three Abrahamic religions.
In the present world circumstances, the most important contribution to peace based on justice that our Churches can offer is their own reconciliation, so that they can become ever more visible and credible signs and instruments of peace. The reunification of Europe East and West, sop close to Your Holiness’ heart, and which is not only a matter of economics but a profound meeting of human cultures, will be possible at the deepest level only when the Church – East and West – lives in peace and communion. It was the still undivided Church of the first millennium which indelibly marked the emergence of the extraordinary rich culture heritage of this continent.
So together we stand for the Christian roots of Europe, together we have to defend, cultivate and make them flourish. Together we have to ensure that Europe does not lose but regain its Christian soul. Such a Christian identity cannot and will not be a narrow-minded closed identity, but corresponds to Europe’s best traditions, and open identity, an open and hospitable home for people of different religions traditions and cultures, willing to live together in mutual respect and peace.
Thus the prayer of our Lord on the eve of His death, that all of His disciples be one, takes on an additional urgency in our days. What we believe to be the Lord’s command is at the same time our response to the signs of the times. It is above all a spiritual duty, but at the same time a political contribution to one of the most important tasks facing the world today. The Church of Rome is ready and determined to walk with patience but also with persistence in the years to come on this common pilgrimage to full communion.
The road map to reach this goal is given to us in the Gospel itself. It is in this sense that Pope John Paul II gave as the motto for the new Millennium “Ripartire da Cristo”, “to start again from Jesus Christ”. We must begin with the Lord’s call to metanoia, which means to give up all self-righteousness and to confess our sins of the past; from which nobody is free. As we Christians, count on God’s forgiveness, so we should forgive our brothers and sisters. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those to trespass against us”, as we pray in the Lord’s prayer. Only metanoia, conversion, repentance, forgiveness will make us free for the future. Next year, on the 800th anniversary of the Sack of Constantinople during the forth crusade we Latins will have reason for such a prayer of forgiveness, as already indicated by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of his Jubilee Pilgrimage in Athens in 2001. All of us, each in our own way have reason for conversion and repentance. We must all feel shame at the divisions which wound the one Holy Church of Christ. There is no ecumenism without conversion.
The Lord’s mandate goes a step further. The best medicine for the wounds of the past is love, which expresses itself in mutual appreciation, respect, help and solidarity. Such love excludes all kinds of jealousy, competition and proselytism. The latter is not the policy of the Catholic Church. The Ecumenical dialogue is an exchange not only of ideas but – as Pope John Paul II emphasizes – of spiritual gifts. Both of our Churches are rich in gifts of the Spirit. Both of us have rich liturgical, spiritual, theological traditions which are not contradictory but complementary, as was so clearly recognized in times past. They belong not to one or the other but to the one whole Church of Christ. Thus the full communion we envisage will not be and cannot be an impoverished uniformity but a rich and flourishing unity in pluriformity, with all the splendor of the very beauty of the Church of Christ. (Unfortunately we cannot yet meet around the Lord’s table of the spiritually poor, and of all those in our time who are thirsting and are exhausted, where we can serve them together. Together we can speak up for justice and peace, for forgiveness and mercy).
Finally, brotherly love is not ours, it is an expression of God’s love. We must pray for it. Unity too is not our work. We cannot “make” or organize it. It is a gift of God’s Spirit. The soul of ecumenism is spiritual ecumenism, where we, like the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and the Apostles after the Lord’s ascension, came together to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit in a new Pentecost. Then, all together, though in different languages, we shall understand and proclaim the one joyful and liberating message of the Gospel. Some weeks ago the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity discussed such spiritual ecumenism and invited all to pray for the gift of unity for the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, that she may be conformed ever more to the image of the triune unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Your Holiness, in our office in Rome we conserve the icon painted by a monk of Mt. Athos which Patriarch Athenagoras gave to Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem: The two apostles, Peter and Andrew, not oppressing each other but embracing each other, stand together as a sign of full communion. In the top part of the icon there is the glorified Jesus Christ, the head of the Church. It is He, the image of the Father in heaven, the one Redeemer of all mankind, the giver of the Holy Spirit, who wanted the Church to be one, and promised to be with us till the end time. It is He who, after the long period of estrangement, can and will reconcile us as the two brothers. He will give us the unity he wants for His Church in order that we may be in a fuller sense of signs and instruments of unity and peace in the world, to the glory of God who is all in all and embraces all human beings in his mercy and love.
Your Holiness, let us pray and work together to implement this promise and this vision of the Gospel. And may the almighty and all-merciful God bless and fill with grace the work he has begun in us.
