"As Churches, we are waiting for proactive steps, but we are here today to help bear witness to Christian life in the world". This was said by Jean-Arnold De Clermont, president of the Council of European Churches (Kek) and president of the French Protestant Federation, as he presented this morning to the press the Rome’s meeting of the 150 delegates of the Churches and Bishops Conferences to kick-start the process for the run-up to the third European Ecumenical Assembly (Sibiu, 2007). While "stopping in Rome", the delegates will meet Pope Benedict XVI twice: tomorrow at 5.30 pm at the celebration of the Vespers in the Basilica of San Paolo Fuori le Mura and next Thursday in private audience. "I think said De Clermont that not even the smallest churches question the honourable primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the universal church, but unfortunately this does not settle the matter of primacy in his jurisdiction". So, "there’s still a lot to be done, along the line of the Ut unum sint". Three are the priorities of the Christian Churches of Europe that have been highlighted today by De Clermont. The first one, "the most important one is the challenge of the laicisation of the contemporary world to which the Churches must respond together. Often, we waste too much time to work on ecclesiological details, while it is more and more pressing to analyse the Biblical theology and the way Christians can put in practice the Word of God". The second priority is commitment to the points that have been put on the agenda by the Charta Oecumenica signed by the Churches in Strasbourg in 2001 about "theological and spiritual analysis and proactive commitment at a social level". Finally, the third challenge, "crossing barriers. We are too closed in our national ecumenical settings said French De Clermont -. Instead we have to network and push the Christians of Europe to meet, to get to know each other, to work together".
