by Gianni Gennari

Here we are again... The long journey has led us to the Church: "I believe in the Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic". The Church, institution and mystery. In the institutional reality a variation of accents, the enrichment and sometimes the burdening of cultures of the past, but with the guarantee - which is given to us directly by the Lord: "I will be with you until the end of the ages" - that no betrayal, no sin of men, even of the Church - and there have been many, we know - will be able to cancel this promise of a continuous future and present. Church "one", even if today it would appear "divided".

The path of history has marked ruptures and apparently incurable conflicts, but little by little the strong feeling of the distinction that pitted Church against Churches has once again made its way through the invocation of Christ himself: "May they be one!" The ecumenical movement was born explicitly about a century ago, and has continued both secretly and visibly.

I am old enough to remember that our mothers told us not to enter the Waldensian Church, here in Rome, near my house today. They were "separated", but were not considered "brothers". To arrive in Rome and be officially welcomed, the ecumenical movement had to wait in theory until the "Mystici Corporis" of Pius XII - 50s - but concretely until John XXIII and the Council, and in the Council to the harsh and persevering strategy of men like Agostino Bea, cardinal of the ecumenical fraternity... What a long way since then! If you consider that on 7 December 1965 the last act of the Council itself - and unfortunately almost no one remembers this - was not the approval of Gaudium et Spes, as is always believed, but the official act of revision and cancellation of the mutual excommunication between Rome and the patriarchate of Constantinople, signed by Paul VI and the great Athenagoras, - “Ambulate in dilectione” (Walk in Love), we realize that a journey has truly begun, which still has to lead far, and that is, ever closer to the true unity desired by Him, the Lord Jesus. Catholics, Evangelicals, Orthodox, united and different, as per history and culture it could be not only legitimate, but providential, but still with diversities that prevent the fullness of true unity, which makes diversity its common richness, and not scandal of a betrayal not yet purified and overcome with that "leap forward" that the blessed, soon-to-be Saint John XXIII announced at the opening of the Council: "Gaudet Mater Ecclesia"! We truly believe in the one Church, but we realize that this very "faith", which comes from Above, obliges us to work, to pray, to offer life and action so that this unity can be realized as He wanted it... The Lord Jesus is not "Catholic", and is not the property of a single Church: on the contrary, his Church, the one truly His, does not have boundaries marked by our differences, but by the abundance of his Gifts - Holy Spirit in the front row – which extends the sacramental and salvific reality to where we are not yet, and perhaps where we do not even dare to think about his presence... This is why today's word tells us to "go out": it means "giving ourselves" and by giving ourselves to announce the one Lord and Master. When two years ago Benedict praised "Luther's faith" in Erfurt, he scandalized those scholars who thought, and insist on thinking, that only they have the authentic meter in their pockets to measure the catholicity of others. So here too, Benedict XVI, the man who for 25 years was "Prefect of the faith", was accused of being a traitor... No: an act of trust in the Holy Spirit who saves the Church and keeps her in the faith always, as it did in the dark ages. “Men of little faith, why do you doubt?” It also applies when we think about the current Church, and with the "Gaudet Mater Ecclesia" in our memory and heart we can read and meditate on the text of "Evangelii Gaudium": there Francis exposed the outline of the present and the immediate future. There he announced his desire for “conversion of the Papacy” (n. 32): it is a Church thing as such! It doesn't say "conversion of the Pope", but "of the Papacy". Even Popes may need conversion, and after all it began exactly like this: Jesus tells Peter that "once converted" he will have to "give strength to his brothers" (Lk. 22, 32). It is the task of Peter, today Francis, in the Church, which as far as it depends on Christ is already in the program "one, holy, catholic and apostolic", subject of the faith of every child of God and object of the faith of those who, for grace, they have had and have the gift of conscious grace and the vocation to salvation, thanks to the "remission of sins".