Ecumenical visits and fraternal meetings

We wish also to thank the Lord because in these last few months too he has shown us his mercy through the visits of many Italian and foreign bishops, thanks to which we have been able to revive ties of church communion: cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, archbishop of Bordeaux; cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, governor of the Vatican; cardinal Severino Poletto, retired bishop of Turin; archbishop Piero Marini, president of the Pontifical committee for the International eucharistic conferences; Claudio Gugerotti,  apostolic nuncio in Belarus; Tommaso Valentinetti, archbishop of Pescara; Alceste Catella, bishop of Casale Monferrato and president of the episcopal commission for the liturgy of the Italian Bishops’ Conference; Giovanni Giudici, bishop of Pavia; Giulio Sanguineti, retired bishop of Brescia; Domenico Mogavero, bishop of Mazara del Vallo; Pietro Maria Fragnelli, bishop of Castellaneta; Renato Boccardo, archbishop of Spoleto-Norcia; Pier Giacomo Grampa, bishop of Lugano, together with a group of fifteen priests of his diocese, for spiritual exercises; Paolo Gillet, retired bishop of Albano; Orthodox bishops Ioannis of Pergamum, Amvrosij  of Gatchina, Antonij  of Boryspil’, Andrej of Remesiana, Seraphim of Germany; the retired Lutheran bishop of Linköping, Martin Lind. To all these and to the Churches entrusted to their care we assure a persevering remembrance in our prayer.

A final moment for which we are grateful to the Lord was the visit of the Norwegian pastor Olav Fikse Tveit, secretary general of the World Council of Churches, who stayed with us for a few days of retreat. In a meeting with the community pastor Tveit spoke especially about the way the WCC tries to carry out its ecumenical vocation, a vocation that is not different from that of every Christian community: that of reciprocal acceptance, so as to be a genuine sign of unity, since it is not a mistake to have need one of another. This “reciprocal responsibility”, a theme on which pastor Tveit has reflected a great deal on the theological level and has worked greatly to see it realized, is the essential way of building unity, which “is for life, being also the way in which God creates life”. Concerning the present situation of the ecumenical movement, the secretary general told us that “today we are asked to be in solidarity with one another especially in our weaknesses… To live in solidarity, in fact, we cannot await the moment in which we will be completely in agreement among ourselves about everything… So we need signs of reciprocal acceptance just as we are.”