In going over the steps taken and recalling the European Ecumenical Assemblies of Basel (1989) and Graz (1997) and the signing of the Charta Oecumenica (Strasbourg 2001), Benedict XVI explains that "true dialogue is established where there is not only the word but the listening too, and where the listening implies the meeting, the meeting implies he relation, and the relation implies the understanding". "Dialogue, therefore, concerns not only the sphere of knowledge and of what we can do". It makes "the Lord speak amidst us". According to the Pope, two are the necessary factors: "the dialogue of the truth and the meeting in the sign of brotherhood", which "need spiritual ecumenism as their foundation". "The prayer for unity highlights the Pontiff is the royal way to ecumenism. It enables the Christians of Europe to look with new eyes at Christ and at the unity of His Church" and "enables us to bravely deal with the painful memories of which the history of Europe is not devoid, and the social problems in the age of a largely-prevailing relativism. In any age he comments , men and women of prayer" have been "the main builders of reconciliation and unity". (continued)
