Czech Republic The Prayer Week for Christian Unity finds a favourable climate in the Czech Republic. The Catholic Church participates as an ‘observer’ in the Ecumenical Council of the Churches and cooperates actively with it. It’s enough to note that religious broadcasts on national radio and TV are jointly produced, except for the Churches’ respective celebrations and liturgical services. Spiritual counselling in the armed forces, in prisons and in hospitals is also offered in an ecumenical key. Even the translation of the Bible into the modern Czech language only exists in an ecumenical version. On 20 January, during the Prayer Week for Christian Unity, the Catholic bishops will meet in plenary assembly in Prague, for an ecumenical celebration with the heads of the other Christian confessions. It will be the most important of all the events planned for the celebration of the Week. Bulgaria Various ecumenical events are being promoted in Bulgaria for the Prayer Week of Christian Unity. Their liveliness reflects the new climate of trust created in the country following the Pope’s journey to Bulgaria in May 2002. In the city of Ruse, on the Romanian border, the Passionist parish priest of the church of “St. Paul of the Cross”, Father Walter Gora, and two Protestant pastors will recite a common prayer together with Father Stefan, parish priest of the Orthodox church of “St. Nicholas”. At Pleven too, in the centre of the country, prayers for Christian unity will be recited during mass each day. But the culmination of the Week will be at Belene, where on Friday 17 January Catholics will participate in the Orthodox liturgy in the church of “St. George” and the Orthodox in turn will attend Catholic mass in the parish of the Nativity. On 19 January, after the liturgical celebrations, all will join together to recite the “Pater Noster” according to the Orthodox version. Turkey Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox of various rites meeting together in a different church each day to ask for the gift of unity: that’s what happens during the Prayer Week for Christian Unity in Turkey, a country in which ecumenism permeates everyday life. So it’s not unusual to see a Greek-Orthodox man marry a Syriac-Orthodox woman with a celebration held in a Catholic church. Or for the Syrian or Chaldaean Orthodox communities of Istanbul, who do not have enough churches of their own, to make use of those of the Catholic Church for their rites, such as masses and baptisms. The close contacts between Christians in Turkey are confirmed by the Catholic Syriac chorepiscopus, Msgr. Yusuf Sag: “the Syriac-Orthodox priests devote themselves to the religious assistance of the Catholics at Mardin and the Chaldaeans at Diyarbakir, in the south of Turkey, who unfortunately have no priests of their own”. No less significant is the presence of metropolitans of the Greek and Armenian patriarchates at the major Catholic celebrations of the liturgical year. This presence is reciprocated by Catholic exponents during the Orthodox celebrations. And all together participate, at the end of Ramadan, in the “iftar”, with the spiritual heads of Islam. Such signs of unity are also recognized by the Turkish government, which recently, as part of the updating of religious textbooks in schools, asked Christians to prepare a section dedicated to Christianity. An ecumenical commission has been set up for the purpose; it comprises exponents of all the Christian rites and is already at work on drafting the new section. Greece “The Orthodox faithful, here in Greece, do not celebrate the Prayer Week for Christian Unity. Nonetheless, during the days of the Week, our prayer is enriched by this particular intention: unity”: that’s how the hope in the unity of Christians is testified by Sister Stefania, Capuchin nun in the cloistered convent “Ut unum sint” on the Greek island of Syros. “In spite of the difficulties of dialogue she says here in Syros we share a very moving experience in the relations between Catholics and Orthodox. Last year we celebrated, together with the Orthodox community, the enthronement of the new metropolitan in the island. A source of joy, repaid by the metropolitan by his presence in our cathedral on 1st January this year, when he prayed with our bishop for peace in the world; a gesture of great importance that shows how possible it is to proceed along the road to unity”. “This week of prayer concludes Sister Stefania conceals a profound desire for communion. It is the cry of the Church “Lord, Our God, listen to our prayer, grant us unity”. Russia “Engaging in ecumenism today means going anew to all those believers, Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants and other faiths, who suffered so much in the recent past. Many of them gave witness by martyrdom. This is the basis from which we need to depart, in Russia, to celebrate once again the ‘Prayer Week for Christian Unity”: the comment was made to SirEurope by Bishop Jerzy Mazur, titular of the diocese of Irkutsk in eastern Siberia, who was expelled from the country in recent months. The same fate was suffered by four priests, they too on the basis of motivations of an administrative order. “To pursue the path of reconciliation Mazur continued we must remain below the cross, and contemplate together Christ who suffered for us, who teaches us and sends us out to preach his love. Below the cross there is no place for distinctions between Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants. Below the cross we are all equal, we are truly brothers”. Bishop Mazur also referred to the words pronounced by John Paul II in his recent address to the diplomatic corps. On that occasion the Pope expressed his own displeasure “about the fate meted out to Catholic communities in the Russian Federation” and awaited “from the government authorities concrete decisions which would put an end to this situation”. “The Pope comments the bishop of Irkustk gave us hope and courage by these words. I hope everyone may have been able to hear them and will not remain silent. I hope too that the Russian government will take concrete steps to ensure that Catholics in Russia may finally have their pastors restored to them”. It is estimated that Catholics in Russia only form just over 0.3% of a population of almost 150 million. The most numerous confession is Orthodox Christianity with an estimated percentage of 16.3%, followed by Moslems (10%), Protestants (0.9%) and Jews (0.4%). United Kingdom A “drop in ecumenical activities organized on the occasion of the Prayer Week for Christian Unity” has been registered in Great Britain in recent years. But “the ecumenical commitment at the day-to-day level, throughout the whole year” has concurrently increased, “because ecumenism is a living and continuous reality than cannot be restricted to a single week”. So says Father Tony Milner, secretary of the Committee for Christian Unity of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. Milner cites some examples of ongoing collaboration between the Churches; it is especially realized within the humanitarian agencies, such as Cafod and Christian Aid, and in communities like “ Iona”, founded on the little island of the same name off the west coast of Scotland, over the ruins of a Celtic monastery and a Benedictine abbey, by the Scottish minister, the Rev. George MacLeod, in 1938, with the purpose of renewing “the Church with the ecumenical spirit and exploring new inclusive ways of praying, based on an integrated understanding of spirituality”. The community currently led by Church of Scotland pastor Kathy Galloway comprises some 3000 members and sympathizers (though only some twenty actually reside on the island). Another ecumenical body, “Churches Together”, is having some resonance in public opinion. An interconfessional organ that regroups 31 churches, it maintains relations with various ecumenical organizations present in Great Britain and Ireland and the rest of Europe. Its fields of work are those in which the various churches seek to find common solutions: life of the Church, Church and society, mission, interreligious relations, international affairs, racial justice. Its most recent work was the publication of a report on sexual abuse and the involvement of the ecclesiastical institutions, with the title “ Time for action“. Taizé The twenty-fifth European meeting organized by the ecumenical community of Taizé in Paris (from 26 December to 1st January 2003) may be defined says frère Emile, Taizé’s communications chief as a meeting in the image of Europe: of the 80,000 youth of 23 nationalities who flocked to Paris from all over the continent, over half came from Eastern Europe (28,000 Poles, 4,300 Romanians), the majority of them Catholics, but also comprising some 5,000 Orthodox and a few thousand Protestants. Reconciling the Christians of Europe to prevent a new war: that was the intention of frère Roger when he founded the Taizé community in 1940. “Today the young need to be given the courage to face the future”, explains frère Emile. “We offer an experience of universality through the meeting of peoples and cultures”. Ottmaring The “Ecumenical Centre of Life” was founded in the early 1960s following the meeting of some members of an Evangelic community, the “Bruderschaft vom Gemeinsamen Leben”, with the Focolare Movement. It is based at Ottmaring (near Augsburg), in Bavaria. It’s a real community, a settlement inhabited by 140 persons, both Protestants and Catholics. In the course of its history, the Centre has been the protagonist of important ecumenical events: from 1988 to 1998 it hosted the meeting of bishops and leaders of various churches. The “joint Declaration” of the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation was signed in Augsburg on 31 October 1999; Ottmaring was chosen as the site for the secretariat that prepared the event. Mixed groups of the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE) and CEC (Conference of the European Churches) met twice in Ottmaring in 2002: in January the two presidencies met for their annual meeting and in September another group it too of the highest level met to discuss the “Ecumenical Charter”. Every evening prayers are recited for Christian unity in the chapel of the Ecumenical Centre. To mark Prayer Week, a meeting is planned for 19 January, during which the theme of the week will be introduced by the Lutheran representative in Bavaria for ecumenism, a series of ecumenical experiences will be presented, and the meeting will end with a final prayer.
