Pope Benedict XVI has concluded the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by urging the various denominations not to let their divisions prevent them from joining together in proclaiming gospel values to a “world marked by religious indifference” and beset with serious moral and ethical problems.

“While we are still on the path towards full communion, we are called to offer a common witness in the face of challenges that are increasingly complex in our age,” the Pope said at Vespers on Monday at the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls.

He said that the challenges included “secularisation and indifference, relativism and hedonism, the delicate ethical issues regarding the beginning and end of life, the limits of science and technology and dialogue with other religious traditions”.

There were also other issues that had to be tackled “beginning right now”, including the “safeguarding of Creation, promotion of the common good and peace, defence of the centrality of the human person and a commitment to defeating miseries of our time such as hunger, poverty, illiteracy and the unequal distribution of goods”.

Representatives from the Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Lutheran and Anglican communities participated in the liturgy, which was conducted entirely in Latin and Gregorian chant. The Pope preached in Italian.

“Unfortunately, there is no lack of issues that separate us from one another and that we hope to overcome through prayer and dialogue,” the Pope said. “But there is a central content of the message of Christ that we can announce together: the fatherhood of God, the victory of Christ over sin and death through his Cross and Resurrection, and trust in the transforming action of the Holy Spirit.”

He said that even though “communion and unity of all Christ’s disciples” was a “particularly important condition for a greater credibility and effectiveness of their witness”, all Christians should still commit themselves to “new and intense” evangelising efforts. He underlined that these were just as necessary in countries “where Christianity has spread and has become part of their history” as in those lands that have never known the Gospel.

The Pope concluded by praying that “the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church” might help bring about the “desire of her Son, that all may be one so that the world might believe”.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict will make his first papal visit to a Protestant church when he visits Rome’s German Lutheran community on 14 March. The church’s pastor, the Revd Jens-Martin Kruse, said the hour-long visit would include a Lutheran prayer service. Pope John Paul II visited the church in 1983.