CATHOLICS AND ORTHODOX: BEAR WITNESS TO CHRISTIAN HERITAGE

VATICAN CITY, MAR 11, 2002 (VIS) - At midday today, the Pope received members of the delegation of the Greek-Orthodox Church sent by His Beatitude Christodoulos, archbishop of Athens and all Greece, who are taking part in a series of work meetings in Rome from March 8 to 13.

In his address in French, the Holy Father said that "personal and reciprocal acquaintance, exchange of information and a sincere dialogue on ways to establish relations between our Churches, are the indispensable condition for us to be able to advance in a spirit of ecclesial fraternity. They also represent the essential condition for instituting a form of collaboration that will enable Catholic and Orthodox together to offer a living witness of their common Christian heritage."

He continued: "We have the duty to transmit this Christian patrimony that we have inherited. For this reason, it is ever more urgent for Christians to offer society an exemplary image of their common behavior, rooted in faith, and for them together to seek solutions to the great ethical problems raised by the sciences and to the attitude that seeks to render abstract or even deny all reference to man's transcendental dimension."

John Paul II underlined that "our responsibility consists of tending to the 'ecumenism of sanctity'." This "will carry us, with the help of God, toward full communion, which does not mean absorption or fusion, but an encounter in truth and love. We must go deeper in our collaboration and work together in order to make the voice of the Gospel resonate strongly in this Europe of ours, where the Christian roots of the people must be revived."

After affirming that Catholics and Orthodox "are united in the proclamation of the 'Kerygma' of the Resurrection," he said, "this proclamation that we wish to make together will give the men and women of today a reason to live and hope; our desire to seek communion among ourselves will also inspire an appropriate model of coexistence in civil societies."

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