Hume Takes Canterbury Pulpit to Stress Role of Papacy
Episcopal News Service. June 6, 1997 [97-1785H]
(ENI) Cardinal Basil Hume, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, recently used the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral to declare that moves towards Christian unity could not include renunciation of the primacy of the Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, spiritual head of the world-wide Anglican Communion, was in the congregation as Hume recalled that in 1982 Pope John Paul had come to Canterbury as a pilgrim, "to plead for unity, not to cajole anyone into it." Echoing the Pope's 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint, Hume said, "It is not the primacy as such that is open to debate, but the manner of its exercise. That is important. It does not threaten, and indeed should not." Hume and Carey were in Canterbury for a three-day celebration marking the 1400th anniversary of St. Augustine's arrival near Canterbury on his mission to evangelize the English. Roman Catholics revere St. Augustine as the "Apostle of the English," as Pope John Paul II described the saint this month. Anglicans look on St. Augustine -- the first archbishop of Canterbury -- as the founder of the English church of which they believe the Church of England to be the continuing embodiment.