C
ComplineSanFran
Guest
It’s good to have you here, posting very positive and encouraging things. I think the bonds between Rome and Canterbury will continue to flourish, especially with our two leaders. May it be so. Even with women moving into the Episcopacy in England. Look at the reception our US Bishops got. Francis is setting a fine precedent in his gracious reception.Pope Francis has a splendid sense of fraternitas and a sense of historic drama. His visit to the Patriarch of Constantinople, using the image of Peter visiting his brother Andrew, was very touching and endearing…and remarkably personal.
The ties of Rome and Canterbury though are also quite profound. One of my favorite places in the eternal city is San Gregorio al Celio…the site of the home of Pope Saint Gregory, which he turned into the monastery of Saint Andrew. It is from there that he sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury and his companion monks to southeast England.
I so vividly remember the day in 1989 when Lord Runcie came to Rome and he and Pope John Paul II met precisely at that spot on the Caelian Hill. I also remember almost a decade later the 1400th anniversary celebration in England of Saint Augustine’s arrival in Canterbury in 597. Another poster remarked the friendship between Pope Paul VI and Lord Ramsay.
There are so many bonds to be celebrated and to be grateful for between the Holy See and Britain. The present atmosphere of cordiality and cooperation is so much better than the animus and mutual suspicion and disdain of a previous era…thankfully.