Uniting The World Under The Beast
Italy
POPE: GOAL OF CHRISTIAN UNITY CLOSER
(AGI) - Vatican City, 25th January - When "Christians pray together", it is then that "the goal of unity seems closer" said Pope Benedict 16th, commenting on the contribution to ecumenism brought about by the Week of Prayer for Unity among Christians, which the Pope himself is to round off this afternoon when he presides at the solemn Vespers in the Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls. Speaking to the Mixed Working Group formed by members of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity and the Church Ecumenical Council, he said that from common prayer is born "a deep harmony between hearts and minds making us able to see events in a new way and to strengthen our determination and to overcome that which keeps us apart". In his address, the Pope expressed his gratitude for the 100 years of spiritual ecumenism which had radically changed the countenance - improving it - of dialogue between the different Christian creeds. "Gratitude towards those many persons - he continued - who over these 100 years have sought to spread the practice of spiritual ecumenism through common prayer, the conversion of hearts, and growth in communion".
Thanks for the "ecumenical movement", fed also by the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, but also open appreciation for a collaboration which has linked the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches for over 40 years, and which "has offered - the Pope recognised - a stark expression of the communion which already exists between Christians". The Mixed Group, said Benedict 16th, "has been working assiduously to strengthen the "dialogue of life" which my predecessor, Pope John Paul II, used to call the dialogue of charity"
