On Dec. 31, I will be joining many leading figures from Britain, including the queen, the prime minister and a wide range of religious and civic leaders, for a national celebration in the Millennium Dome. I will have the great privilege and joy of leading the nation in prayer and thanksgiving.

Of course, being at the Millennium Dome, which has deliberately been developed on the Greenwich Meridian, I am sharply reminded that, for several centuries, we have looked at the world in a very euro-centric way. For a long time, maps have been centered around Europe, often exaggerating its size in comparison with other parts. Much of the language which we use to describe the world - the Far East, the Antipodes, the West Indies - assume that everyone sees the globe from a London perspective.

Well, the Anglican Communion demonstrates so well how those perspectives have changed as we enter the new millennium. We are truly a worldwide Communion, and we are called to value, respect and care for one another. There continue to be so many places and so many people who are weighed down by the burden of human suffering. We are at one in that suffering as we are at one in the joy of faith. Indeed, it is by growing in that sense of oneness that our pain is transfigured as we each seek to express God's love in our own lives.

It is in that spirit that many people have become very involved in the campaign to lift the burden of unpayable debt from the poorest countries of the world. This campaign, led by the Jubilee 2000 Coalition, has been very successful in drawing attention to the moral dimensions of the problem, and we must ensure that the momentum is maintained, and developed into a challenge to ensure that the United Nations' targets on poverty reduction by 2015 are achieved.

(The Most Rev.) George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury