(From our correspondents in Sydney) Some fifteen different confessions and religious communities, both Oriental and Reformed, participated this morning in the ecumenical meeting with the Holy Father, held in the crypt of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. News of the meeting is reported by the spokesman of the Vatican Press Room, Fr. Federico Lombardi. The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney was absent from the meeting, though he sent his suffragan to represent him and, as Father Lombardi underlined, "a very fine letter, very warm in its tribute to the Pope and to World Youth Day". "Ecumenism has a common basis, on which we are intervening, but also a goal, full communion, which we realize is not easy to achieve", observed the Vatican spokesman commenting on the statement in the Pope’s message that the ecumenical movement has reached a "critical point", sign of the "honesty and clarity with which the Pope sees the situation and expresses himself on it". (to be continued)
