Bishop David Looks Ahead to This Week’s Royal Visit to Rome

This morning on BBC Radio 4, Bishop David shared his Thought for the Day:

Good morning

It began with a messy divorce, but this week may see an important step of reconciliation. British monarchs, whose office includes being Supreme Governor of the Church of England, have met popes before. What will make this week’s royal visit to Rome unique in half a millennium is that Pope Leo and King Charles will pray together. Beyond kings and popes, barely a century ago, Catholics were not allowed even to pray the Lord’s Prayer with non-Catholics. We’ve come a long way.

I’m not expecting events in Rome this week to lead Anglicans and Catholics to come together into a unified church. Whilst many of us essentially believe and teach the same things, 500 years of separation have seen us develop distinctive patterns of church order and governance. The recent announcement that Bishop Sarah Mullally will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury contrasts sharply with an all male Catholic priesthood. Yet setting aside all expectations of unification, that such senior figures from different denominations can not just speak but pray together matters to me hugely. Meeting and speaking with other Christians is one thing. Being alongside them, as together we speak with God is, in my view, something qualitatively different and indeed richer.

That willingness to pray together is something I’ve found can cross even wider  boundaries of religion. As the first anniversary of the terrorist atrocity at the Manchester Arena drew near, I spent a day travelling with a BBC producer, speaking with people who had been involved in the response to the attack. One of our interviewees was a local Imam with whom I’d worked closely in the days following the tragedy. After several minutes of conversation we realised that speaking with each other was not enough. First in silence, then in words, we prayed. He and I hold very different understandings as to how and where God has most fully revealed himself, but the petitions we needed to make, for victims of terror, for our city and beyond, were drawn from wells deeper than our divisions.

That prayerful common ground stretches far beyond responding to terrorism. When the King and Pope meet to pray this week, they will do so in a service crafted to reflect both the longstanding environmental concerns of the King and the powerful encyclical Laudato Si issued by Pope Francis. It was that same issue of combatting climate change which drew me, alongside other religious and civic representatives from Greater Manchester, to meet with Pope Leo’s predecessor two and a half years ago. Mindful of our different traditions, we didn’t then pray. Perhaps, taking a lesson from Charles and Leo, were we ever to repeat the trip, we should.