Act on unity, Pope urges.ENI Vatican City Pope Benedict XVI  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. has given his support to a gathering of Europe's mata Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches List of Roman Catholic Churches
"Europe needs to rediscover its Christian roots, making room for ethical values that are part of its rich and well-established spiritual heritage," Pope Benedict told church leaders attending the opening event in Rome for the Third European Ecumenical Assembly, which will culminate in Romania in September 2007. Still, the pontiff added at the meeting on Jan. 26, "Our presence as Christians will prove incisive and enlightening only if we have the courage to continue decisively down the path of reconciliation and unity." Delegates to the assembly had joined Pope Benedict the day before for prayers to mark the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an international Christian ecumenical observance kept annually between 18 January and 25 January. It is actually an octave, that is, an observance lasting eight days. being celebrated by churches around the world. The Rome gathering was organized by the Conference of European Churches The Conference of European Churches (CEC) was founded in 1959 to promote reconciliation, dialogue and friendship between the churches of Europe at a time of growing Cold War political tensions and divisions. (CEC (Central Electronic Complex) The set of hardware that defines a mainframe, which includes the CPU(s), memory, channels, controllers and power supplies included in the box. Some CECs, such as IBM's Multiprise 2000 and 3000, include data storage devices as well. ) and the Council of European (Roman Catholic) Bishops' Conferences (CCEE CCEE Conseil des Conférences Episcopales Européennes (Switzerland) CCEE Câmara de Comercialização de Energia Elétrica CCEE Consilium Conferentiarum Episcoporum Europae (Council of European Bishops' Conferences) ). The two groups account for almost all of Europe's Anglican, Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. The four-day meeting ended on Jan. 27 with an appeal to Christians in Europe to "join this pilgrimage of hope" towards the gathering in Romania "Our continent has taken great steps forward politically and culturally, and yet exploitation, oppression and violence are still enormous obstacles on our way," delegates said in a statement. |
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