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Dave Quintana from Servants of the Word
(right) with Fr. Bob Oliver from
Brotherhood of Hope (left).
An
Anglican in Rome
Reflection on an
Ecumenical Meeting for
Consecrated Persons
by Andy
Pettman
Q [Dave Quintana] turned to me, and said, “look!
They are everywhere. They must be going to our
conference.” But the closer we came to our
destination, the more “them” there were, and the
more we realised that, well in this city, you
would find “them” on every street corner! The city
was Rome, and the “thems” were nuns in traditional
habits!
This was not my first trip to Rome, but it was my
first to a meeting arranged by the Vatican. As an
Anglican, Rome holds more fascination for me as
the capital of a lost empire, and as a European
cultural contrast to my own English upbringing,
than it does as a pilgrimage site. That
notwithstanding the invite to “An Ecumenical
Meeting of Consecrated Persons” had intrigued me,
so when Ken Noecker, the presiding elder of the
Servants of the Word, invited me to go to
represent us, I did not hesitate to re-arrange my
plans.
On arrival at our venue, the Augustinianum, just
outside St Peter’s Square, I was delighted at the
welcome, and relieved, given the fairly short
notice of the invitation, to find that, yes, they
were expecting us. Shortly after our
appearance the conference began with a welcome
from a red capped Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de
Aviz. He was effusive in his expressions of
delight that we had come, and come from so many
different places.
I looked around the room. What a mixture. There
were of course Catholic nuns, and monks, and
consecrated priests with all the usual garb – they
made up a bit over half of the 110 of us. Then
there were Orthodox - Serbians, Russians, Copts,
Greeks, and a small tribe of Romanians – ten in
fact –all from one monastery in Transylvania – in
varying habits. But there were also Protestants –
Lutherans, Free Church, Franciscan Anglicans, and
Evangelicals. Moreover, there were two other
ecumenical brotherhoods represented: Taizé,
founded in eastern France; and Bose founded in
northern Italy. Like the Servants of the Word both
groups are constitutionally ecumenical, and have
Catholic, as well as Protestant, and some
Orthodox, members.
Cardinal João continued with words that set the
heart theme of the conference. He commented: “We
want to express unity in diversity”; and “We
were the church of God, the one and only in the
past…but now we have acknowledged the greater
number of the things we have in common,” and
“Ecumenism today allows everyone to acquire a
truer approach.” I was already feeling very
much at ease. Here was a man who represented the
highest levels of the Catholic world, saying how
much his church now recognized other churches and
valued them.
The rest of the conference was structured so to
flesh out his words, with presentations from
different groups and traditions during the day,
and each evening ending with a bus journey to take
us to our location for evening prayer in different
church traditions. The first night we travelled to
the vast basilica (but Rome is filled with vast
basilicas!) called the Church of Jesus – the
mother church for the Jesuits. The second night we
journeyed to the beautiful Russian orthodox church
of St Catherine of Alexandria, where we were
packed into a tiny interior fugged with incense,
and followed as the Orthodox monks canted the
traditional evening prayers of the church. And the
third night we found our way to All Saints
Anglican Church for evensong - I felt quickly at
home!
But the conference was far more than a series of
presentations, discussions and services. It was
supposed to be a time of genuine getting to know
one another, or communion, one tradition to
another, even across language barriers. This being
Italy the food was excellent, and so around lunch,
or over a late morning snack, we would chat,
sharing and laughing about many of the practical
things we have in common: living together in
community with all its ups and downs; experiencing
being misunderstood in our call to live a celibate
committed life; sharing our faith in a Europe that
has lost its taste for believing in God; bringing
new men and women into our different groups, and
what helps them to find a home with us. The
conversations were rich.
On the third day we had a private (at least
private to the 110 of us) audience with Pope
Francis. Finding a path through the security
queues, and then up stair ways secured by Swiss
Guards, we made our way through the Apostolic
Palace to the Clementine Hall, where Pope Francis
would greet us. When he arrived he looked tired –
he had just returned from Manila – but he was warm
and gracious. From what I understand this
conference was his inspiration, something
ecumenical in the Year of Consecrated Life, during
the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, in its
breadth possibly the first ever of it type.
Getting everything right all the time for a group
as diverse as ours was never going to be
easy. On Friday, lunch was…well… normal –
meat, a fine Friday dish in Rome. Later that day
the Monsignor José Rodríguez Carballo who was
leading us through the program made an official
apology to the Orthodox in the group (who normally
fast on a Friday) apologizing that there been no
alternative to meat at the meal. What impressed me
though was the real desire of the organisers, to
try and get it right, to not offend, and the
recognition that it is sometimes in small things
like this that divisions are created between
us. But this time, we were not going to be
divided.
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