The Friends of the Anglican Centre in Rome are holding their Spring meeting in the North East, in Newcastle at St Nicholas’s Cathedral.  The Anglican Centre is the permanent Anglican Communion presence in Rome, which builds bridges with the Roman Catholic Church.  As Archbishop Rowan Williams says, ‘it is a vital gift to the Communion and to the whole ecumenical enterprise.

Many may feel, as Bob Fyffe, General Secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, has observed recently ‘that the ecumenical movement is becalmed’ – that it is, as it were, in a desert.  But, he comments, while a desert might be lonely and hostile it is also a place of renewal and growth.  ‘In our ecumenical journey’ he concludes ‘we might see (the becalming) not as a cause for mourning but an opportunity for renewal and rekindled hope.’ This meeting is in that spirit.

Dr Marcus Pound, Catholic Research Fellow of Durham University, will be speaking on “Receptive Ecumenism”.  The programme is as follows:    

                        1200   Eucharist in St Nicholas Cathedral

                        1245    Lunch

                        1400    Address by Dr Marcus Pound

                        1530    Tour of the Cathedral (if wished) & tea.

St Nicholas Cathedral is 5 minutes walk from Newcastle Central station