The day of unity ” “

“May the joint Kirchentag become a great ecumenical sign that union in the faith is stronger that what it is that divides“; and “Christians have a common mission to the world”: so declared John Paul II in the message he sent to the Oecumenische Kirchentag that opened in Berlin on 28 May (cf. SIR nos.33, 37, 38/2003). But “our witness as believers – admonished the Pope in his message, read out by the Nuncio apostolic, Msgr. Giovanni Lajolo,– is obscured by the division of Christianity. Suffering due to the lack of real unity among all Christians must always urge us to seek and find in dialogue the ways to unity in truth and in love”. After the official welcome on behalf of Germany expressed by the President of the Republic, Johannes Rau, the great ecumenical meeting began. The programme is rich: each day there will be occasions for spiritual and biblical reflection, meditation and contemplation. Already during the solemn inaugural ceremony in the Brandeburger Platz, and in twelve other sacred sites in Berlin, both Catholic and Evangelical churches, common liturgies were celebrated. Over 5,000 guests, and some 200,000 participants (far more than expected, over half of them young people) are taking part in this “kermesse” of the spirit. “And how on earth are you to divide your time between the hundreds of debates, lectures, round tables, on the programme? – asks Angelo Paoluzi, expert on the situation of Christianity in Germany, and SIR correspondent in Berlin – The reporter can do no more than make his own perhaps invidious choice among the hundreds of options: for instance, he may suggest the ‘podium’ where the question will be posed: ‘Is the ice age over?’, and where an archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Longin of Klin, a metropolitan of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Daniel of Iasi, and two experts in problems of confessional relations between Catholics and Orthodox will discuss ecumenical problems”. Or, continues Paoluzi, “he may suggest ‘All men are born free and equal in rights’, a round table in which a Brazilian missionary, a member of Islamic-Christian Dialogue, a Buddhist representative from Hong-Kong, two imams, respectively from Marseilles and Cologne, will participate together with many others. Or again, another discussion on the new Europe, with a debate between participants of various nationality, including a Hungarian, a Dutchman and an Austrian”. Elsewhere a group of journalists, three Polish, one Czech and one from Belarus will be debating “Overcoming the frontiers – acting ecumenically”. Not to mention the dramatic debate on the problems of the Middle East: “Jews, Christians and Moslems together for peace”, with the participation of the patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah, rabbi Michael Melchior, the sheik of Hebron Tal El Sider, and Canon Andrew White from Coventry Cathedral. And to Africa, the great forgotten continent, will be dedicated a forum on the unresolved and dramatic problems of war, famine and Aids. “Contrary to what you may think – observes Paoluzi – this meeting is not the monopoly of cardinals, bishops, evangelical churchmen and famous personalities. I can testify from my own experience of the Katholikentag that there’s passion, hard-hitting debate, a great desire to understand and be understood. And the person sitting on the other side of the table does not monologue, but dialogue. This time with an added witness: the media”. “The coverage being devoted to the event by newspapers, television and radio stations that usually pass over religious events with the briefest of mentions is quite incredible”, he says. Not only the Berlin papers, with a local interest in the event, but those of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Bonn: often with thick supplements, like that of the ‘Frankfurter Rundschau’, a paper about as ‘lay’ as you can get, or the ‘Berliner Tageszeitung’ or the ‘Tagespiegel’; not to mention the slots that radio and TV are devoting to the Kirchentag. Is this too a ‘sign of the times’?”.