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POPE-CHRISTODOULOS Dec-14-2006 (570 words) With photos. xxxi
Pope, Greek Orthodox primate pledge to work toward full communion
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After centuries of allowing themselves to grow apart, Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox must seek forgiveness and learn to work together for the good of the world, said Pope Benedict XVI and Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and all Greece.
The pope formally welcomed the primate of the Orthodox Church of Greece to the Vatican Dec. 14, solemnly signing with him a commitment to preaching the Gospel together and to working for full communion.
"We want to live more intensely our mission of giving an apostolic witness, of transmitting the faith to those who are near and those who are far," said the joint declaration, written in Greek and in French on a large piece of parchment.
In their speeches to each other and in their declaration, the pope and the archbishop acknowledged how far apart their communities had grown over the centuries and how difficult their relations were, even as late as the 1990s.
Pope Benedict said Catholics and Orthodox should have learned from what the New Testament describes as the situation of the early church in the Greek city of Corinth, which knew "the difficulties and serious temptations of division."
"In effect, a real danger appears where persons want to identify themselves with one group or another," rather than with Christ, the pope said.
Through increased contacts and formal dialogue, the pope said, Catholics and Orthodox have come to value each other's spiritual, liturgical and theological traditions and to see them as gifts from God.
Pope Benedict and Archbishop Christodoulos vowed to use the newly rediscovered fraternity of their churches to ensure the future of Christianity in Europe and to address a host of modern challenges facing society.
The archbishop told the pope that "in our role as spiritual fathers of the pious members of our churches" the two of them must raise an alarm about "all that threatens the values and structures of European civilization deeply impregnated by the Christian faith."
The "progressive de-Christianization of Europe," attempts to exclude faith-based speech from the public arena, "religious fanaticism," and attacks on human life, including research on embryos, call for religious leadership and moral guidance, Archbishop Christodoulos said.
In their joint declaration, the pope and archbishop also pledged to work for peace in the world.
"We believe religions have a role to play in spreading peace throughout the world and that they must by no means sow intolerance and violence," the declaration said.
"As Christian religious leaders, we ask all religious leaders together to continue to pursue and strengthen interreligious dialogue and to work to create a society of peace and brotherhood. This is one of the missions of religion," they said.
Archbishop Christodoulos also thanked Pope Benedict for deciding to give a very important relic to the Greek church: links from the chain venerated as that which bound St. Paul during his imprisonment in Rome.
The Vatican said church documents from as early as the middle of the third century spoke of the chains kept at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, the site of St. Paul's burial.
Over the centuries, links have been distributed to others for veneration; the gift to Archbishop Christodoulos consisted of two of the remaining nine links, each of which is in the form of a figure-eight and is about two and a half inches long.
END
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