Church in the World

Europe's Churches on an 'ecumenical pilgrimage'

Romania

MORE THAN 2,500 representatives of European Churches are attending an ecumenical gathering in Romania to set out plans for cooperation and joint witness by the continent's Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican communities, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

The five-day meeting, which opened at Sibiu on Tuesday, marks the third and final stage of the third European Ecumenical Assembly (EEA), co-organised by the Swiss-based Council of Catholic Episcopates of Europe (CCEE) and Conference of European Churches (CEC), which brings together 124 non-Catholic denominations.

Speakers were set to include Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, spiritual leader of world Orthodoxy, and the Methodist president of the World Council of Churches, Revd Dr Samuel Kobia, as well as the Anglican Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, and the head of the ecumenical Taizé community, Br Alois.

Organisers said key debates focused on the ecumenical charter signed by the CCEE and the CEC in 2001. They added that the Sibiu gathering was intended to complete an "ecumenical European pilgrimage" launched in Rome in January 2006, and would include prayers and debates, as well as nine discussion forums on issues ranging from spirituality and witness to migration and ecology.

Six Catholic cardinals were expected to attend the gathering, including CCEE's Hungarian president, Cardinal Péter Erdö, and the chairman of the Papal Council for Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Before leaving for the conference, Scotland's Cardinal Keith O'Brien told The Tablet that European Christians had a great desire to experience renewal that would bring about unity: "I hope and pray that our pilgrimage to Sibiu will help us here in Scotland to redouble our efforts and intensify our prayers so that we will be recognised as true disciples of Jesus because of the love we have for one another," he said.