Anglican leader urges 'convergence' with Catholics

AFP
Posted November 19, 2009

ROME — Church of England leader Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, said Thursday the "glass is half-full" in relations with the Catholic Church despite strains over a Vatican overture to disaffected Anglicans.

Speaking ahead of a meeting Saturday with Pope Benedict XVI, who last month approved a new structure for allowing groups of Anglicans into the Catholic fold, Williams said the two churches had "unfinished business" to resolve, but that "the ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full."

"The strong convergence... about what the Church of God really is, is very striking," he said in a lecture at Rome's Gregorian University, questioning "whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain." the rest