{"id":291332,"date":"2006-08-20T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-20T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/cardinal-willebrands-a-pastor-who-worked-indefatigably-to-promote-unity\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:38:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:38:55","slug":"cardinal-willebrands-a-pastor-who-worked-indefatigably-to-promote-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/cardinal-willebrands-a-pastor-who-worked-indefatigably-to-promote-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinal Willebrands: \u201cA pastor who worked indefatigably to promote unity\u201d."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cChrist\u2019s demand for Peter\u2019s love is not limited to one group or to the Roman Catholic Church, because all men form part of Christ\u2019s fold.\u00a0 Consequently, all Christians are summoned to love, and first and foremost this love calls for unity, because lack of unity in a family brings suffering.\u00a0 This was the spirit that led me to understand my new task and to carry it out with all my heart and all the spiritual and material abilities that God has given me.\u00a0\u00a0 I was blessed by the Lord and I thank Him deeply for calling me to serve Him in this field for such a long time during my work in His Church\u201d.<\/em> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These were the words that Cardinal Johannes Willebrands said when he was interviewed by Vatican Radio in 1989.\u00a0 He was then 80 years old, and because of his old age, his task as President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was coming to its end after a service of 20 years. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Benedict XVI:\u00a0 \u201cA pastor who worked indefatigably serving God\u2019s people and promoting the unity of the Church\u201d, one who gave \u201ca new leap forward to the ecumenical dialogue\u201d.\u00a0 <\/em>These were the words the Pope wrote in his telegram when Cardinal Willebrands passed away on the 2nd of August.\u00a0\u00a0 The Pope thanked the Lord for the life of the Cardinal, who died at the age of 97.\u00a0\u00a0 His commitment to serve the ecumenical cause started in 1951, ten years before Vatican Council II. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The gratitude of the Focolare Movement is very much alive: Since the 1960\u2019s Cardinal Willebrands accompanied and encouraged the Movement\u2019s ecumenical developments with wise farsightedness. A biographical note \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cardinal Willebrands was born in Bovenkarspel, Netherlands, in 1909.\u00a0 A lecturer of philosophy and then a rector of the Major Seminary of Warmond, Holland, he immediately showed keen interest in the cause of Christian Unity, and in 1951 he organised a Catholic conference on the ecumenical question.\u00a0 In 1958, the Dutch bishops appointed him delegate for ecumenical activities.\u00a0 Two years later, Pope John XXIII appointed him secretary of the then recently established Pontifical Council for promoting Christian Unity which, during the Second Vatican Council – under the guidance of Cardinal Bea –\u00a0 made an important contribution to the writing of the documents relating to ecumenism, religious freedom and relations with non-Christian religions. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He was consecrated bishop in 1964, and he promoted numerous ecumenical initiatives to intensify the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the other Christian Churches.\u00a0 His contacts were mainly with Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran representatives.\u00a0 In 1969 he succeeded Cardinal Bea:\u00a0 Pope Paul VI appointed him president for the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians (later this was given the name of Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity).\u00a0 After a little while he was made a cardinal. Brothers from various Churches give their witness \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Among the numerous witnesses given by our brothers and sisters of various Churches, we recall a very meaningful episode, witnessed by the German Evangelical Pastor Dieter Furst.\u00a0 In 1986, Pastor Furst spoke about a meeting that Cardinal Willebrands had at Centro Uno, the Ecumenical Centre of the Focolare Movement in Rome.\u00a0 He said that the Cardinal met a group that came from the Evangelical Church.\u00a0 Before this meeting with Cardinal Willebrands, the group feared that \u201cthe great and mighty Catholic Church wanted to crush the small and weak Evangelical Church\u201d.<\/em>\u00a0 The Pastor added that among the participants there were also representatives from the free Churches, who were really even more afraid of this.\u00a0 But the Cardinal spoke in such a paternal way and his words were so full of the Holy Spirit, that he filled these brothers with enthusiasm: \u201cThe Cardinal has revealed the Church and Christianity on a much broader dimension than the one we knew before.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Gratitude of the Focolare Movement<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291332","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=291332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}