Monday 6 December 2010

WCC leader’s meeting with Pope



The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, met with Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience at the Vatican this weekend.

The two church leaders discussed a number issues including visible church unity and the situation of Christians in the Middle East.

The short meeting, which lasted about quarter of an hour, took place on Saturday 4 December 2010.

"We had a very open and friendly conversation," Dr Tveit said after the audience. "He emphasised in a very kind and also a very strong way the importance of the World Council of Churches' work and the ministry I am called to do as General Secretary."

Pope Benedict also "expressed his interest in how we are now developing and planning for the work we are going to do in the future. He has himself been involved in our Commission on Faith and Order, so he knows a very important dimension of our work very well."

As a theologian and Archbishop, Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, was part of the WCC Faith and Order Commission in the early 1970s.

Dr Tveit said the Pope was interested in how the WCC will work with "our theological issues, and how we also strengthen the work of visible unity between the churches".


According to the WCC chief, Pope Benedict said taking the approach of allowing the Bible to be a centrepiece in theological discourse and reflection was one way of strengthening visible Christian unity.

This was the first meeting between the two since Dr Tveit assumed the role of WCC General Secretary in January of this year. It was his second visit to the Vatican this year.
The Roman Catholic Church participates in several WCC activities, including the Faith and Order Commission, the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism and the Joint Commission of the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic representatives provide input for the planning of the 10th WCC Assembly in Busan, Korea in 2013.

The WCC has 349 member churches who represent more than 550 million Christians around the world, including the Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant and some Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches. The Roman Catholic Church is a single church with some 1.2 billion members.

No comments:

Post a Comment