London, England, Sep 26, 2008 / 03:07 am
This week the Archbishop of Canterbury became the first Anglican leader to visit the Marian shrine at Lourdes in France. During his three-day visit, he preached a homily at an international Mass and made remarks which critics construed to mean that he accepted the reality of the Marian apparitions at Lourdes and the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception which the apparitions communicated.
One critic called the archbishop’s presence a “wholesale compromise” and labeled him a “papal puppet.”
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been invited to the shrine by Jacques Perrier, the Catholic bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes. He was joined by an unprecedented pilgrimage of eight Church of England bishops, about 60 Anglican priests and about 400 Anglican laymen and women, a number of whom are considering converting to Catholicism as a result of the theological turmoil in the Church of England.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, celebrated the international Mass.