Pope and Anglican Archbishop Meet
Archbishop of Canterbury Robert A. K. Runcie met Pope John Paul II on Friday during the first day of a visit marked by controversy over the issue of Anglican-Catholic reunification.
The Pope embraced the archbishop at the beginning and end of the meeting, and Runcie said he was happy to visit the “engine room” of Catholicism.
“No theological disagreement will permanently divide us when we know each other no longer as strangers but as friends,” he added.
Runcie’s trip, his first official visit to the Vatican, caused a stir in England after he said in a magazine interview that he would accept some kind of papal authority “linked to a renewed ecumenical and universal primacy.”
In response, some conservative Anglican leaders demanded his resignation.
Runcie, spiritual head of the world’s 70 million Anglicans, will meet with the Pope for two more discussions during his four-day visit.
On Sunday he will become only the second Archbishop of Canterbury to attend a papal Mass since England split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 over King Henry VIII’s refusal to accept papal authority.
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