{"id":290842,"date":"2004-06-24T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-24T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/chiara-lubich-in-audience-with-the-archbishop-of-canterbury-most-rev-rowan-williams\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:37:08","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:37:08","slug":"chiara-lubich-in-audience-with-the-archbishop-of-canterbury-most-rev-rowan-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/chiara-lubich-in-audience-with-the-archbishop-of-canterbury-most-rev-rowan-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiara Lubich in audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev. Rowan Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

  <\/p>\n

\"\"Chiara Lubich\u2019s first appointment was at Lambeth Palace, in audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, Primate of the Church of England. Chiara Lubich herself spoke about this audience during a press conference in London:<\/p>\n

\u201cArchbishop Williams was particularly interested in our experience of interreligious dialogue.<\/strong> He asked me what our secret was. I referred to the Novo Millennio Ineunte,<\/em> where the Pope deals in depth with the mystery of Jesus who, on the cross, cried out, \u2018My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u2019 After having lost his mother, his disciples and soon afterwards his very life, Jesus also lost his sense of unity with the Father, which meant everything to him. Jesus was reduced to nothing. This is a point of our spirituality of communion, which teaches us to be \u2018nothing\u2019 in front of people of other religions, to be a \u2018nothingness of love\u2019 to be able to \u2018enter\u2019 in them, because \u2013 as we said \u2013 we must \u2018know how to get into the other\u2019s skin\u2019, to the point of understanding what it means for them to be Buddhists, Muslims, or Hindus. But we can enter in others if we are nothing. Jesus Forsaken is our model for this.\u201d \u201cWe also spoke about other subjects,<\/strong> such as the ecumenical movement; the commitment that we \u2013 together with a large number of Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and Orthodox movements \u2013 have taken upon ourselves to contribute towards making the \u201cEurope of the Spirit\u201d a reality. Being a theologian, he was very interested in this topic.\u201d \u201cI was greatly impressed by the quality of the relationship between Chiara and the Archbishop,\u201d <\/strong>commented Callan Slipper, minister of the Church of England and focolarino, who was present at the audience. \u201cThe Archbishop had an attitude of profound openness, he is one who knows how to listen and appreciate. This attitude was evident from the very first moment when, after Chiara had named all the preceding Primates of the Church of England she had come to know, the Archbishop jokingly remarked, \u2018Then you know the Church of England better than I do!\u2019 When he was informed of Chiara\u2019s appointments during her visit, he affirmed that what was about to take place in those days was very timely because \u201cwe have great need of it both as a nation and as a Church.\u201d The ecumenical page of Focolare relations with the Church of England began in 1961, <\/strong>with Archdeacon Bernard Pawley, who had met Chiara Lubich in Rome. Later, some Anglican ministers participated at a meeting among Catholics and Evangelical Lutherans in Grottaferrata (Rome). They were deeply touched by the atmosphere created by reciprocal love, which made them recognize one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. In 1966, at Lambeth Palace, London, Chiara met the then Primate of the Church of England, Archbishop Michael Ramsey,<\/em> for the first time. \u201cI can see God\u2019s hand in this Work,\u201d<\/em> he told Chiara, encouraging her to spread the spirituality of the Movement in the Church of England. Later Chiara also met his successors: Coggan, Runcie<\/strong> and Carey. <\/strong>In Great Britain the Focolare Movement includes Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. At Welwyn Garden City, an \u201cecumenical little town\u201d <\/strong>is coming to life. It is the unity <\/strong>that lies at the heart of the Focolare spirituality, which particularly draws the interest of Anglicans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trip to England\/3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}