Murder of Christians creates an ‘ecumenism of martyrs’, says Pope

POPE FRANCIS has told a group working to reconcile Anglicans with Rome that the killing of Christians because of their faith, such as those currently dying in the Middle East, would bring about a new era of ecumenical commitment, writes Christopher Lamb.

Talking to the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic) – whose co-chairman, Archbishop of Birmingham Bernard Longley, right, presented Francis with an icon of the English saint Thomas à Becket, murdered while Archbishop of Canterbury – the Pope said that those who are killed for their Christian faith offer an “ecumenism of martyrdom”.

In his address, the Pope cited the 45 Christians killed in Uganda in the 1880s, comprising Catholics and Anglicans. Stressing that the cause of unity is not a “secondary element” in the life of the Church, Francis added that the blood of the martyrs would nourish “a new era of ecumenical commitment”.

The Pope met the 18 members of the commission before they left for their annual meeting at the Palazzola retreat house, in the Alban Hills south of Rome.

Arcic, established after the Second Vatican Council and now in its third phase,  has focused on the communion of the Church at local and universal levels, and discernment of correct ethical teaching.

The third phase of Arcic was started after dialogue had halted for some years and relations had been further strained by the creation of new structures – personal ordinariates – for Anglicans wanting to become Catholics. In an interview with The Portal, the online magazine of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Archbishop Longley described the ordination of women bishops “as a new reality for us and serves to highlight the challenges before us and the obstacles on the way to full visible unity”.

The archbishop said Arcic should look at the question of female ordination, saying: “What is the scope for ordination, for administering this sacrament and who are to be the recipients? We believe this is not determined by the Church alone but by what the Church has received from the Lord.”