Johannes Fichtenbauer, advisor to Cardinal Schönborn in Vienna, spoke of a dramatic new step in church unity made at the Pentecost 2017 gathering in Rome last June, on the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic movement. Pope Francis invited Pentecostal and Charismatic church leaders to join Catholic leaders in acknowledgement of these ‘younger brother and sister churches’ as the source of the Catholic renewal movement. The Austrian lay leader said the pope had taken a step no predecessor had done: to declare a goal of unity not based on ‘separated brethren returning to the Mother Church’, but rather a ‘unity in reconciled diversity’, unity through diversity.
This unity required a humility on all sides, the pope had stressed, a recognition that each church missed something that others could offer. Church unity could only happen, he believed, when all moved closer to Christ, not when others ‘returned to Rome’.
Source: Jeff Fountain - Weekly Word, 13 November 2017, "Time to Listen"
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