The years following the closure of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 witnessed an explosion of bilateral ecumenical dialogues between various churches. Among these is the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), which traces its origins to a consultation of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops in May 2000. It holds a unique place which may offer hope for renewed ecumenical progress.

Pope St. John Paul II and Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. George Carey signed a Common Declaration when Carey visited Rome in December, 1996. In response to that declaration, Carey and Cardinal Edward Cassidy, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), invited pairs of Anglican and Catholic bishops from around the world to gather at a retreat house in Mississauga, ON. Chosen by their fellow bishops to represent their respective Anglican Province or Episcopal Conference, they met to evaluate the state of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations and to chart a course for the future.

Grounded in prayer, the consultation began with a time of retreat, a shared meditation on conversion, communion, and a renewal of baptismal promises. On alternate days, the Eucharist, Morning Prayer, and Evening Prayer were celebrated according to the tradition of each communion. Making use of a theological reflection model based on experience, the gathering was designed with a minimum of input from other presenters at the consultation. Among the goals identified by the planning committee, it was hoped that the bishops would have an experience of exercising their episcopal ministry together during the consultation and continuing after, which might encourage commitment to a more regular exercise of shared ministry locally. With this in mind, a questionnaire was forwarded to the countries of the participating bishops prior to the conference. Responses to the questionnaire provided a kind of “map” of the state of current relationships, examples of ongoing joint witness, and issues which should be addressed together.
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Following a long-standing tradition, on the occasion of today’s Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, patron saint of Constantinople, Pope Francis has sent a delegation to Istanbul to convey his greetings and the assurance of his “fraternal affection” to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I.

The visit is part of the annual exchange of Delegations between the Holy See and the Patriarchate for their respective patronal feasts, on 29 June in Rome, the Feast of St. Peter and Paul, and on 30 November in Istanbul, Türkiye.

In his message, Pope Francis highlights listening without condemning as the primary path toward unity between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, expressing his hope that the upcoming celebrations 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea may offer an opportunity to strengthen the fraternal relations they have developed over the past six decades.
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Doubling down on the centrality of synodality in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis said that it is now up to local churches to accept and implement proposals from the final document approved by the Synod of Bishops on synodality.

Approved by the pope, the synod’s final document “participates in the ordinary magisterium of the successor of Peter, and as such, I ask that it be accepted,” the pope wrote in a note published by the Vatican Nov. 25.

“Local churches and groupings of churches are now called upon to implement, in different contexts, the authoritative indications contained in the document, through the processes of discernment and decision-making provided by law and by the document itself,” he wrote nearly a month after the synod’s close.

The final document outlined key priorities for the church, including increased participation of laity through new ministries and adjusted governing structures, greater transparency and accountability among church leadership and creating space for previously marginalized groups.

After synod members voted to approve the final document, Pope Francis announced that he would not write the customary apostolic exhortation after the synod but would instead offer the document to the entire church for implementation.
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Anne-Cathy Graber was surprised when Mennonite World Conference received an invitation to send a delegate to the Roman Catholic Synod on Synodality’s concluding assembly in Rome.

“The invitation was amazing, considering how small the Mennonite world is,” said Graber, secretary for ecumenical relations for MWC.

Graber, 60, is an itinerant Mennonite pastor in France. She was tapped by MWC general secretary Cesar Garcia to be one of the 16 fraternal delegates from Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Baptist, Mennonite, Pentecostal and Disciples of Christ churches at the synod.

As a fraternal delegate at the Oct. 2-26 assembly, Graber — who is also co-director of the Chair of Ecumenical Theology at the Faculties Loyola Paris and a member of a religious order that promotes Christian unity — could fully participate in discussions with 368 delegates from around the world. The only thing she could not do was vote.
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On October 24, 2024, Canada’s four leading nuclear disarmament organizations—the Canadian Pugwash Group, the Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Canadians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, and Project Ploughshares—convened an expert Roundtable on “Nuclear Disarmament in Times of Unprecedented Risk.” This was the second extraordinary roundtable held in response to rapidly escalating nuclear threats. The convening organizations share the profound conviction that Canada must urgently reassert its voice and leadership in the global disarmament arena.

The world now stands on the razor’s edge of the most severe nuclear weapons threat since the Cold War. Recent years have seen a deep erosion of the global nuclear arms control and disarmament framework, marked by the collapse of critical treaties, advances in destabilizing weapons technologies, record-breaking expenditures in conventional arms, and an alarming resurgence of great-power competition.
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An Ecumenical Prayer Vigil took place on Friday, 11 October, in the Square of the Roman Protomartyrs at the Vatican, attended by Pope Francis and participants in the second session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (2-27 October 2024).

In his introductory remarks, Cardinal Koch, Prefect of the DPCU, recalled that this day marked the anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and also highlighted the 60th anniversary of the publication of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, and the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio.
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When most of us speak of “the New Year,” we are generally talking about January 1, the day when our Western civil calendar rolls over from one year to the next. But we know that we live in a world of multiple “new years,” such as the new school year which begins in the autumn, the new liturgical year that starts with the First Sunday of Advent, fiscal years for businesses and NGO’s, and the new year that a wedding anniversary inaugurates.

We also know that, in a diverse country like Canada, many of our neighbours follow religious and cultural calendars that mark various New Years, including the lunar new year (aka the “Chinese New Year”) celebrated by several Asian cultures. Both Islam and Judaism rely, either completely or partially, on a lunar calendar. This results in a year of 354 days — different from the solar calendar many of us in the Western Hemisphere use, which has 365 or 366 days. In Islam, this means that important holy days and seasons gradually “slip backwards” throughout the year, and can occur in any Western month. In Judaism, that variation is “corrected” by the insertion of an occasional “leap month,” which resets the calendar and ensures that important feasts occur, more or less, in the same seasons.
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At the heart of Catholic ecumenism, there is a paradox. For Catholics, the papacy stands as a focus of unity. The pope exercises a primacy within the church as the successor to the apostles of unity, Peter and Paul, who established the church in Rome and whose tombs continue to be places of pilgrimage. Yet, despite this ministry of unity, the papacy itself is the greatest obstacle to unity in the church today.

In 1995 Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical on Christian unity, Ut Unum Sint, “That All May be One.” Known for his many great (and long) encyclicals and other letters to the church, the saintly John Paul invited us to a spiritual conversion both as individual Christians and as a church. He spoke about how the cause of Christian unity is not an appendix to the church’s work but an integral aspect of our mission as the body of Christ called to unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. He reminded us that spiritual ecumenism is at the heart of the ecumenical movement, and he invited us to pray regularly for the unity that Christ willed for the church. He called us to work, together with other Christians, in justice and social action for the common good.

He acknowledged that for many Christians separated from us, the history of the papacy and its claims to exercise authority in the church and world constituted an original cause of division that continues to be a source of irritation and a reminder of the great chasm between our churches. He noted that central to the papal claims is that he is the successor to the apostle Peter, the first among the Twelve. This “primacy” is a character, or charism, not only of the pope, but also of patriarchs of the Eastern churches, archbishops within their metropolitan territories, and bishops within their presbyterate. Primacy, like other charisms, is a gift of the Holy Spirit for building up the church in unity. The pope as primate of the universal church has a universal ministry of unity.
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The second session of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, set to bring 368 bishops, priests, religious and laypeople to the Vatican, will begin by asking forgiveness for various sins on behalf of all the baptized.

As synod members did before last year’s session, they will spend two days on retreat before beginning work; that period of reflection will conclude Oct. 1 with a penitential liturgy presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican announced.
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