Historic Stopover

On his way to New Delhi for the Third General Assembly of the World Council of Churches, the Most Rev. Arthur C. Lichtenberger, Presiding Bishop of the U.S. Protestant Episcopal Church, made a historic stopover in Rome for an audience with Pope John XXIII. The bishop's visit, arranged through the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, was the first meeting of a U.S. Episcopal chief prelate and a Pope (though it followed by almost a year an ice-breaking Anglican audience, that with Geoffrey Fisher, then Archbishop of Canterbury).

The stopover had even more significance in the context of Bishop Lichtenberger's journey. This week's New Delhi assembly, a milestone in the swelling movement for Christian unity, will be attended by such leading churchmen as Presbyterian Eugene Carson Blake, Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, German Evangelical Bishop Otto Dibelius, and Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Church--plus five observers from the Vatican.

Bishop Lichtenberger said that ecumenical-minded Pope John showed great interest in the assembly and intends to return the New Delhi invitation; he will invite Protestant observers to the Catholic ecumenical council scheduled for late next year or early 1963.

The two leaders spoke for 40 minutes in the Pope's private library. "We did not discuss our differences," said Lichtenberger. "This would have been quite beside the point." He came away optimistic about the "encouraging atmosphere" of "keeping communications open." But, he cautioned, "the road to Christian unity is sure to be a very long process."

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