The service of unity” “

The Prayer Week for Christian Unity is being celebrated throughout Europe from 18 to 25 January. It’s an invitation to all the members of the Churches to pray that the division of Christians may finally cease, according to Jesus’ prayer “that they all be one thing only”. The Week is prepared each year by a different international and interconfessional Commission, established by the Pontifical Council for the Unity of Christians and by the World Council of Churches. To the Commission is assigned the task of formulating an initial project of meditations and prayers to be proposed to the Churches. The project for 2003 was drawn up by an ecumenical group in Argentina which has chosen as the theme of meditation the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians (4:5-18): “A treasure as in earthen vessels”. We have taken the opportunity provided by this annual event to conduct an inquiry on the progress of ecumenical dialogue in Europe. Out of a total population of 790 million inhabitants, Europe (including the countries of the former Soviet bloc) comprises some 500 million Christians. There are almost 300 million (269,944,011) Catholics, 135 million Protestants and Anglicans, and 104 million (104,175,560) Orthodox. A fundamental stage in the progress of European ecumenical dialogue was the signing of the Charta Oecumenica by the Christian Churches in Strasbourg. Germany Some 1,100 organizations and groups have agreed to meet together in Berlin for the first ecumenical day of the German Churches to be celebrated from 28 May to 1st June with the slogan “You are a blessing”. The meeting, the first on a federal scale, is expected to be attended by over 100,000 representatives of the various Christian confessions. Numerous themes will be tackled during the wide variety of discussions on the programme: they include violence, the causes and religious roots of terrorism, the situation in the Middle East, Christian-Islamic dialogue and Christian-Jewish dialogue. The ecumenical day has been presented and publicized in all the dioceses by a pastoral letter of the German bishops, which declares: “We Christians have a common mission for our world, irrespective of our belonging to different Churches and religious communities”. And the bishops conclude: “We must do our utmost to achieve this unity”. Meanwhile, in Germany too, the campaign to turn 2003 into the Year of the Bible has begun. Launched by the Christian Churches of the country, the initiative is inspired by the hope that greater familiarity with holy scripture may help people to find answers to the questions they are posing about the meaning of life. Switzerland Art and tourism as privileged ways to help the public at large rediscover the Bible: that’s what the Christian Churches of Switzerland are proposing. Together with Germany, Austria and France, they have called 2003 the Year of the Bible. “The event – explains Cornelia Nussberger of the team entrusted with the task of promoting it – is aimed at encouraging people to read the Bible by proposing non-traditional approaches through the media of art, tourism , culture and theatre”. In the course of 2003 the Swiss Churches are proposing three specific projects. The first – with the slogan “On the traces of the Bible” – involves schools and groups of children aged from 8 to 13. The second – “Biblical paths” – focuses instead on tourism and art with a series of historical itineraries and archaeological visits to significant sites. The third project invites parishes and communities to transcribe one or more pages of the Bible, so as to produce from them an original manuscript in several languages, including those of Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. France A myriad events promoted in every diocese and most parishes – prayer vigils, meetings of dialogue, round tables: that’s how the Prayer Week for Christian Unity is to be celebrated in France. “I find it astonishing to see how many original events are being promoted at the diocesan level – says Father Christian Forster, secretary of the Episcopal Commission for Christian Unity -. They testify to a feeling for dialogue that is still very much alive, in spite of the fact that the Week is now over seventy years old”. Another ecumenical initiative, “The Year of the Bible”, is also being promoted in France this year. But in this case it has been launched by the Federation of the Protestant Churches alone, even though it is supported by the Council of Christian Churches and “where possible – explains Fr. Forster – Catholics will associate themselves with it”. The dioceses of Metz and Strasbourg will do so: two cities bordering on Germany where the Catholic bishops and the presidents of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, accompanied by their respective councils, will meet together during Prayer Week to reflect on Europe. Paris, by contrast, is planning a youth meeting between Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Lutherans and Orthodox (on Sunday 26 January). This year France is celebrating, in a series of commemorative events, the 50th anniversary of the death of the abbé Paul Couturier, one of the founding fathers of the Prayer Week for Christian Unity and founder of the Dombes group, an avant garde ecumenical association established in France in 1937. The work of discussion and dialogue planned within the various mixed committees also promises to be fruitful. With the Orthodox, for example, work has been proceeding for ten years on the drafting of a document on Uniatism which will finally be published in the spring of this year. Spain An interconfessional Bible to be realized in the course of 2003 and some further steps towards the creation of a “Council of the Christian Churches of Spain”: these are the two projects, at the national level, presented by don Carlos de Francisco Vega, secretary of the Episcopal Commission for interconfessional relations, on the occasion of the Prayer Week for Christian Unity (18-25 January), which will be celebrated in all the dioceses of Spain. Each diocese will organize its own independent events. In the meantime the Spanish Episcopal Conference has made available on its own website a series of materials for the event, including a basic text for liturgical celebration, biblical reflections and a message signed by the three bishops of the Commission. A couple of years ago a process began in Spain, aimed at the creation of a Council of the Christian Churches, to be composed of representatives of the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Reformed Church, the Evangelic Church, the Union of the Baptist Churches of Spain, the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, and any others that want to join. “The Council’s Statute has just been drawn up – explains don Carlos de Francisco Vega – now there’s a need for the individual Churches to approve it, but the process for that is likely to be rather long. The hope is that the project may be completed within one or two years”. Albania “Now that Albania is no longer ‘drawing’ international public opinion, we have many difficulties: we are poor and lack the means to organize ourselves properly. However we are engaged on various fronts, also in ecumenical dialogue”: so says Bishop Angelo Massafra of Scutari, president of the Albanian Episcopal Conference, contacted by SirEurope on the occasion of Prayer Week for Christian Unity. “It needs to be said straight away – explains Bishop Massafra – that our relations with the Orthodox community are very positive, and this favours a lively Christian presence, in spite of the difficulties. For example, in my own diocese we are planning a service of common prayer organized by the two Christian confessions, Catholic and Orthodox, in the form of solemn vespers. We’ll celebrate it on the evening of 25 January, last day of the Week”. In Albania, Catholics represent only about 10% of the population, while some 20% are Orthodox and 70% Moslem. Latvia A shared past of Soviet persecution and a present enlivened by good relations and reciprocal exchanges make Latvia a “laboratory for ecumenism”. That’s how Cardinal Janis Pujats , archbishop of Riga and president of the Latvian Episcopal Conference, describes the ecumenical experience of his country. In Latvia Catholics represent 14.9% of the population and Protestants 14,6%. The Orthodox amount to 7.6%. But the majority of the population (62.9%) declare themselves non-religious or atheist. “All the national festivities – says the archbishop – are celebrated together and many activities, projects and even documents are drawn up jointly”. Joint declarations on abortion and on religious education in schools have recently been published. The activities realized by the Churches together are various: pilgrimages, preparation for marriage, spiritual retreats. The recent European meeting of Taizé, for example, was attended by no less than 900 young Latvians representing various Churches. “For three years now – adds Cardinal Pujats – the bishops of the main Christian confessions have met together for a good-natured, non-official meeting during Prayer Week for Christian Unity”; this year the meeting was held at Saldus from 13 to 15 January. Slovakia The Prayer Week for Christian Unity in Slovakia is organized jointly by the Slovak Episcopal Conference and the Ecumenical Council of the Churches, a body that brings together all the churches officially recognized in Slovakia (Lutheran, Reformed, Orthodox, Methodist, Hussite, Baptist). In a public appeal issued on the occasion of Prayer Week, the Churches appealed to all Christians to contribute to the life of society with a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration, and to promote peace and justice”. The Week will culminate in the Orthodox church at Komarno on 26 January, with a liturgy of the Word led by Msgr. Frantisek Tondra, president of the Episcopal Conference, and by the Orthodox archbishop of Presov, metropolit Nikolaj of Slovakia and Bohemia. The event will be broadcast live by national television. A “prayer chain of the young” has been organized for the first time this year; it will be held in all the main cities of the country on the evening of 25 January