To Representatives of Other Christian Confessions (31 May 1980)

On 31 May 1980, in Paris, France, the Holy Father addressed the Representatives of other Christian Confessions, calling for mutual forgiveness to prepare the way to eventual unity.

Dear Brothers in Christ,

Thank you for this meeting that I wanted to have with you during my first visit to France. Very cordially, I first greet our Orthodox brothers, who have come mainly from different regions of the East, to live in this country which welcomed them, thus continuing a long tradition of which Saint Irenaeus was one of the first examples. I am not forgetting the representative of the Anglican Church either. And I now turn to the representatives of French Protestantism here present.

At this time of the effort that we are making in common to restore among all Christians the unity willed by Christ, it is indeed necessary that we become aware of the demands that the fact of being Christian entails for us today.

First of all, and in the dynamics of the movement towards unity, we must purify our personal and community memory of the memory of all the clashes, the injustices, the hatreds of the past.

This purification takes place through reciprocal forgiveness, from the bottom of the heart, a condition for the blossoming of true fraternal charity, of a charity which harbors no grudges and which excuses everything[ 1 ] . I say it here because I know the cruel events which, in the past, have marked the relations of Catholics with Protestants in this country.

To be a Christian today asks us to forget this past in order to be completely available for the task to which the Lord calls us now[ 2 ] . You are faced with this task and I particularly rejoice in the quality of the collaboration that exists between you, especially with regard to the service of man, a service understood in all its dimension and which urgently and now requires a witness from all Christians, the necessity of which I have already insisted on in the encyclical “Redemptor Hominis ” .

But, today more than ever perhaps, the first service to be rendered to man is to bear witness to the truth, to the whole truth, “alithevondes en agapi”, “confessing the truth in love”[ 3 ] . We must never rest until we are once again able to confess all the truth together, all this truth in which the Spirit guides us[ 4 ]. I know how frank your collaboration is also in this area, and the exchanges which took place during the assembly of French Protestantism in 1975 are an example of this frankness. It is necessary that we succeed in confessing the whole truth together in order to be able to bear witness in common to Jesus Christ, the only one in whom and through whom man can be saved[ 5 ] .

I wanted to tell you briefly some of the feelings that animate me at this moment, but I did not want to expand further to avoid reducing the time available for more personal exchanges, and for the prayer that will conclude our meeting.

But before moving on to this prayer, I want to thank you very warmly for your interventions, your introductions; in these introductions, one can say, I find questions, but I also find fruit. Because that is already a fruit: you have clearly underlined that it is a fruit of exchanges which have been going on for some time now. Obviously the exchanges will create questions. And it's just, we can't do otherwise, we can't move forward otherwise.

It must be considered that we now have to redo centuries, and redoing centuries cannot be done in a few years, at least according to human criteria. But the work itself , the fact that we meet, the fact that we dialogue, that we ask ourselves questions, that we seek to answer, that we seek to scrutinize our own truth, is already a fruit, yes, it is already a fruit, and we can do nothing but continue, continue.

I must say that I live deeply the anniversary that you are living this year, I mean the 450th anniversary of the “confessio augustana”, yes, deeply. I live it in a way that is incomprehensible to me because it is someone who lives it in me. “Someone will lead you! » : I think that these words that the Lord spoke to Peter are, perhaps , the most important of all the words he heard : « Someone will lead you! ".

I must also say that my fraternal visit to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople gave me great hope. I found myself very well in this atmosphere, in this environment which obviously constitutes a great spiritual reality. A complementary reality: one cannot breathe as a Christian, I would say more, as a Catholic, with only one lung; one must have two lungs, that is to say eastern and western. This to evoke only this visit to Constantinople.

I think that in this great question of unity to be rediscovered, there is obviously a historical moment, and if we question ourselves, between us, it is another that questions us even more, because obviously we find ourselves faced with a radical negation of all that we are, of what we believe, of what we preach, of what we testify . We can not answer this fundamental question otherwise than by a testimony: testimony of faith, testimony of unity, testimony in Christ. This is the historic moment in which we find ourselves, and this moment is accompanied by our efforts.

I think that here we are — one might say — in good standing, we have recognized the signs of the times and we are trying to respond to them, within ourselves, with our strengths, our human strengths, we are all seeking to respond to them. But there is, as you also underlined in your speeches, another element which is much more important than our efforts, and that is time. Time, that is to say, hope. We hope that the Lord will give us that day when we will find ourselves united, and perhaps on that day we will have — we can be sure that we will have — another vision of the difficulties that we see today as such. A vision of different approaches to the same source , the samethe same truth of the same Jesus Christ, of the same Gospel.

I am convinced that the Lord is preparing this for us, and that is why he inspired the spirit of our predecessors — I say predecessors in the menic sense — in particular obviously I am talking about John XXIII who was here as Nuncio and who continues to be present in our minds .

And that is why we must always pray. I think, I am convinced that the function, the fundamental task of Christian communities, of the Churches, the fundamental task of all believers always remains prayer. Prayer... and it is the Lord who has taught us to pray for a long time, but especially to pray for this unity because it is he himself who prayed for this unity in a moment that could be said to be the summit of his mission.

And because of that, thanking you for everything you were saying a while ago, I am grateful to the Lord and to you to be able to find me with you, and to be able to hear from you these words that I have heard, because I think: what does it mean, “Brothers”? This doesn't only mean people who always say to themselves: yes, yes, I love you, but it also means people who sometimes argue; but if they are arguing for a common good, for a greater good, then that is fine.

In order not to increase the delay, because I see that the organizers are already pressing us, we could now move on to the prayer which must obviously crown our meeting. Before saying the Lord's Prayer, we could place ourselves together before God's saving plan by meditating on the magnificent confession of the Apostle Paul in the hymn of his letter to the Ephesians.

“ Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven in Christ. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world so that we would be holy and blameless under his gaze in love.

“ He predestined us to be adopted sons to him through Jesus Christ; thus willed his benevolence in praise of his glory and of the grace with which he has showered us in his Beloved.

“ In him by his blood we are delivered, in him our sins are forgiven, according to the riches of his grace. God has given it to us; opening us to all wisdom and intelligence.

" He has made known to us the mystery of his will, the benevolent plan which he has fixed in advance in himself to bring the times to their fulfillment: to unite the whole universe under one head, Christ, what is in heaven and what is on earth.

“ In him too we have received our part, following the plan of him who leads everything according to his will: we were predestined to be to the praise of his glory those who had hoped beforehand in Christ.

“ In him, again, you have heard the word of truth, the gospel that saves you.

“ In him you have believed again, and you have been sealed with the seal of the promised Spirit, the Holy Spirit, deposit of our inheritance until the final deliverance where we will take possession of it, to the praise of his glory” [ 6 ] .

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us
this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our trespasses,
 as we also forgive
those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

* * *

Before the prayer, the Pope improvised the following speech, which takes up some of the topics covered in the speeches addressed to him:

But before moving on to this prayer, I want to thank you very warmly for your interventions, your introductions; in these introductions, one can say, I find questions, but I also find fruit. Because that is already a fruit: you have clearly underlined that it is a fruit of exchanges which have been going on for some time now. Obviously the exchanges will create questions. And it's just, we can't do otherwise, we can't move forward otherwise. It must be considered that we now have to redo centuries, and redoing centuries cannot be done in a few years, at least according to human criteria. But the work itself, the fact that we meet, the fact that we dialogue, that we ask ourselves questions, that we seek to answer, that we seek to scrutinize our own truth, is already a fruit,

I must say that I live deeply the anniversary that you are living this year, I mean the 450th anniversary of the “confessio augustana” yes, deeply. I live it in a way that is incomprehensible to me because it is someone who lives it in me. “Someone will lead you”: I think these words that the Lord said to Peter are, perhaps, the most important of all the words he heard: “Someone will lead you. »

I must also say that my fraternal visit to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople gave me great hope. I found myself very well in this atmosphere, in this environment which obviously constitutes a great spiritual reality. A complementary reality: one cannot breathe as a Christian, I would say more, as a Catholic, with only one lung; one must have two lungs, that is to say eastern and western. This to evoke only this visit to Constantinople.

I think that in this great question of unity to be rediscovered, there is obviously a historical moment, and if we question ourselves, between us, it is another that questions us even more, because, obviously, we find ourselves before a radical negation of everything we are, of what we believe, of what we preach, of what we testify. We can not answer this fundamental question otherwise than by a testimony: testimony of faith, testimony of unity, testimony in Christ. This is the historic moment in which we find ourselves, and this moment is accompanied by our efforts.

I think that here, we are – one could say – in good standing, we have recognized the signs of the times and we are trying to respond to them, within ourselves, with our strengths, our human strengths, we are all seeking to respond to them. But there is, as you also underlined in your speeches, another element which is much more important than our efforts, and that is time. Time, that is to say, hope. We hope that the Lord will give us that day when we will find ourselves united, and perhaps on that day we will have — we can be sure that we will have — another vision of the difficulties that we see today as such. A vision of different approaches to the same source, the same truth, the same Jesus Christ, the same Gospel. I am convinced that the Lord is preparing this for us,

And that is why we must always pray. I think, I am convinced that the function, the fundamental task of Christian communities, of the Churches, the fundamental task of all believers, always remains prayer. Prayer… and it is the Lord who has taught us to pray for a long time, but especially to pray for this unity because it is he himself who prayed for this unity in a moment that could be called the summit of the mission. And because of that, thanking you for everything you were saying a while ago, I am grateful to the Lord and to you to be able to find me with you, and to be able to hear from you these words that I have heard, because I think: what does it mean, “Brothers”? This does not only mean people who always say to themselves: "yes, yes, I love you", but it also means people who sometimes argue; but if they are arguing for a common good, for a greater good, then that is fine.

In order not to increase the delay, because I see that the organizers are already pressing us, we could now move on to the prayer which must obviously crown our meeting. Before saying the Lord's Prayer, we could put ourselves together before God's saving plan by meditating on the magnificent confession of the Apostle Paul in the hymn of his letter to the Ephesians.

 [ 1 ] Cf. 1 Corinthians 13, 5 and 7.

 [ 2 ] Cf. Phil 3, 13.

 [ 3 ] Ep 4, 15.

 [ 4 ] Cf. Jn 16, 13.

 [ 5 ] Cf. Ac 4, 12.

 [ 6 ] Ep 1, 3-14.

© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

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