Vatican City, Nov 30, 2018 / 13:23 pm
On the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, Pope Francis told the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople that while the Holy Spirit has in recent years prompted a "fraternal dialogue" between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, both Churches should work to achieve full communion with one another.
"While centuries of mutual misunderstanding, differences and silence may seem to have compromised [the relationship between the Catholic and Orthodox Church], the Holy Spirit, Spirit of unity, has enabled us to recommence a fraternal dialogue," the pope wrote.
"This was definitively resumed by our venerable predecessors, Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Saint Paul VI, and has enabled us to rediscover those bonds of communion that have always existed between us."
"The search for the re-establishment of full communion is above all a response to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the eve of his Passion prayed that his disciples 'may all be one,'" the pope added.