Pope Francis meets with members of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Dialogue Commission (ARCIC) at the Vatican, May 13, 2022. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, May 13, 2022 / 12:20 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis said on Friday that members of the Anglican Communion are “valued traveling companions” as Catholics take part in a worldwide synodal process.
Speaking to the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Dialogue Commission (ARCIC) on May 13, the pope said he hoped that Anglicans would contribute to the two-year initiative leading to the Synod on Synodality in Rome in 2023.
He said: “As you know, the Catholic Church has inaugurated a synodal process: for this common journey to be truly such, the contribution of the Anglican Communion cannot be lacking. We look upon you as valued traveling companions.”
The 85-year-old pope noted that in July he is due to travel to South Sudan with Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican Communion.
The pope, who has been making his public appearances in a wheelchair since May 5 due to a torn ligament in his right knee, said: “As part of this concrete journey, I wish to recommend to your prayers an important step. Archbishop Justin Welby and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, two dear brothers, will be my traveling companions when, in a few weeks’ time, we will at last be able to travel to South Sudan.”
“The visit was postponed on account of the troubles in that country. My brother Justin is sending his wife ahead of us for the works of preparation and charity. This is the fine work he is doing with his wife, as a couple, and I thank her very much.”
He added: “Ours will be an ecumenical pilgrimage of peace. Let us pray that it may inspire Christians in South Sudan and everywhere to be promotors of reconciliation, patient weavers of concord, capable of saying no to the perverse and useless spiral of violence and of arms.”
The Anglican Communion is the world’s third-largest Christian communion after the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. It has an estimated 85 million members in more than 165 countries.
ARCIC was founded in 1967 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI. Currently in its third phase, the commission’s most recent document is entitled “Walking Together on the Way.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Cardinal Joseph Zen. / Yung Chi Wai Derek/Shutterstock.
Rome Newsroom, Sep 28, 2022 / 04:48 am (CNA).
On Tuesday, Cardinal Joseph Zen’s second day in court in Hong Kong, five witnesses were cross-examined and the magistrate ruled that there was… […]
A detail of Timothy P. Schmalz’s fourth station: Jesus meets his mother. / Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 18, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
Catholic artist Timothy P. Schmalz sought to find and bring to life the most important subject matter an artist could ever express.
“I wanted to create a sculpture project that would be the heart of Christianity,” the Canadian sculptor said.
He settled on Christ’s crucifixion and death.
His new creation, once finished, will be a life-size set of the 14 Stations of the Cross — scenes depicting Christ’s journey from being condemned to death to his burial — placed right next to Disney World. The faithful will be able to encounter the 12-foot tall, 11-feet wide sculptures at the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida.
“I hope to rival Universal Studios, Walt Disney, and every other feature in Orlando by creating what has never been done before, and that is one of the biggest, most complex Stations of the Cross,” Schmalz said.
Once completed, visitors will encounter the 12-foot tall, 11-feet wide sculptures at the Basilica of Our Lady Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida. “It’s right in the center of a place that desperately needs a spiritual Catholic oasis,” sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz says. Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
Schmalz is not new to sculpting. The experienced artist’s work can be found worldwide, from St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to Washington, D.C. He is perhaps best known for his “Homeless Jesus” sculpture and the “Angels Unaware” statue.
His new Stations of the Cross, he hopes, will serve as a tool for evangelization and conversion for the roughly 50 million people that visit Disney each year.
“It’s right in the center of a place that desperately needs a spiritual Catholic oasis,” he said, adding that bringing the Stations of the Cross to Orlando is “bringing the Gospels [to] where the people are, in a sense.”
The stations — which combine mural painting and sculpture — will offer visitors “visual doorways into a Catholic-Christian experience,” he said.
So far, he has completed the first four stations: Jesus is condemned to death, Jesus carries his cross, Jesus falls for the first time, and Jesus meets his mother.
It will take another year, he says, before all 14 are done. On his YouTube channel, Schmalz walks viewers through the process of creating each station, from sketching them on paper to sculpting them in bronze.
Each scene, made of bronze, bursts with symbolism, movement, and emotion. The foreground shows Jesus’ passion. In the background, Schmalz plans to include every single parable found in the New Testament.
“When you see Jesus in the front, you’re going to see … a raw, hardcore scene from the passion,” he said. “But in the distance, you’re going to see the parables that he taught us. So it might be in the distance, you’ll see a camel trying to get through a little hole in the wall or the eye of the needle.”
While he works in his studio located in St. Jacobs, in Ontario, Canada, he listens to an audio recording of the New Testament, he said.
“Things are pulled out and things describe themselves as I create,” he explained, comparing his role to a “passenger” or “director.”
The stations are getting funded by various donors, he said, as he works on them. As they progress from one to 14, each station will become “more and more intense.”
“The passion now has become my passion,” he said.
He hopes that viewers will feel like they are a part of the stations.
“We know there’s a lot of kids going to Walt Disney in Orlando every year,” he said, giving one example. “I’m putting a lot of children within them so they can see themselves in the scene.”
The 53-year-old artist also sees himself in them.
“It’s fascinating because you really become a part of the subject matter as you’re working on it,” he said. “It evolves and it grows as you’re working on it, and it’s almost like it tells you what to do in a sense where I don’t necessarily know exactly how the piece will end up.”
He called the project mentally, spiritually, and physically taxing. He might dedicate one entire day to creating a little corner of one of the stations, he said, and another day just focusing on the face of Jesus.
But, he added, the work is worth it. These stations allow him, as an artist, to “get to the absolute essence of Christianity” in the hope that “it will be one of the greatest tools to convert and inspire Christianity.”
“I hope to rival Universal Studios, Walt Disney, and every other feature in Orlando by creating what has never been done before, and that is one of the biggest, most complex Stations of the Cross,” says Timothy P. Schmalz, shown here in his studio looking at the fourth station. Courtesy of Timothy P. Schmalz
“I want [people] to come back from Orlando and, sure, talk about the rides, talk about Mickey Mouse. But I want them to say that the most exciting and most interesting and most moving thing with their vacation was this Stations of the Cross project,” he said. “And if I can do that with this piece of artwork, I have succeeded.”
At a time when many people are attacking Christianity and Christian symbols, Schmalz’s response is to create new, stronger symbols. “Sculptures that are bold, sculptures that celebrate and glorify Christ, but also encourage people to walk through that doorway and see Christ in focus,” he said.
“As they try to make us invisible, we have to sharpen,” he concluded. “And me, as an artist, that is my job, to sharpen our identity with these symbols and art.”
This reader recalls a letter to-the-editor to, I think The New Oxford Review, where an Anglican was disconcerted even then, in the early 1980s, over the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican communion. The Anglican writer asked how could the Catholic Church dialogue with Anglicans when the Anglicans, themselves, had no idea what they themselves believed.
A significant milestone since then, of course, is Pope St. John Paul II’s “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” regarding the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Probably this more recent clarification (1994), and others, will be useful to help reorient the Anglican-style “synodal wayward” in Germany.
Low Church, broad Church, Anglo Catholic….I wonder which branch of this ecclesial community will be listened too…talk about ideology…we have nothing to learn from heresy and schism only how not to fall into error…the sincerity of individuals who adhere or find themselves in their history as part of this communion..yes we may learn much from individuals..in fact they may achieve a deeper relationship with Christ than countless Catholics..only because those Catholics neglected the means of holiness..Word of God, Sacraments, prayer and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. This is mind-blowing confusion.
“[Some] Anglicans are ‘valued traveling companions'”.
I’ll buy that. Like those two on Anglican Unscripted.
This reader recalls a letter to-the-editor to, I think The New Oxford Review, where an Anglican was disconcerted even then, in the early 1980s, over the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican communion. The Anglican writer asked how could the Catholic Church dialogue with Anglicans when the Anglicans, themselves, had no idea what they themselves believed.
A significant milestone since then, of course, is Pope St. John Paul II’s “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” regarding the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders. Probably this more recent clarification (1994), and others, will be useful to help reorient the Anglican-style “synodal wayward” in Germany.
Low Church, broad Church, Anglo Catholic….I wonder which branch of this ecclesial community will be listened too…talk about ideology…we have nothing to learn from heresy and schism only how not to fall into error…the sincerity of individuals who adhere or find themselves in their history as part of this communion..yes we may learn much from individuals..in fact they may achieve a deeper relationship with Christ than countless Catholics..only because those Catholics neglected the means of holiness..Word of God, Sacraments, prayer and the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. This is mind-blowing confusion.