The annual ecumenical meeting of Bishops/Friends of the Focolare Movement has ended in Prague. At the invitation of the Archbishop of the city, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, the meeting had brought together 43 bishops of 18 Churches, from 17 nations in four continents from 20 to 27 September. The climax of the week was the “Ecumenical Sunday” celebrated at the Mother Teresa Centre in the Czech capital, where the bishops met 400 exponents of ecclesial and civil life: Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Evangelicals, Methodists, Baptists, Old Catholics, Pentecostals, Hussites and members of the Church of Brothers. “Europe was emerging from the 20th century with so many exterior and interior wounds – said Bishop Christian Krause, former President of the World Lutheran Federation and as such one of the signatories of the joint Catholic-Lutheran Declaration on Justification – but God intervened”. And he recalled “the velvet revolution” in Prague, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and also the signing of the Declaration in Augsburg in 1999, which led to the collapse of centuries-old barriers between the two denominations. During the meeting, the bishops concentrated in their celebrations and reflections on the theme “My night has no darkness: towards a culture of resurrection”, illustrated by a conversation prepared by Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolari.
