Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and representatives of other Orthodox and Anglican churches accompanied Pope Benedict in lighting a candle to launch the Year of St Paul. Opening the year last weekend, Pope Benedict said the apostle's courageous witness to the faith should serve as a model for contemporary Christians, CNS reports.
"Paul is not a figure of the past that we remember with veneration. He is also our teacher, an apostle and a herald of Jesus Christ for us, too," the pope said at an evening prayer service in the Rome Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls.
The liturgy had a strong ecumenical tone, CNS says.
Accompanied by Patriarch Bartholomew and the representatives of the other churches, the pope lit the first candle from a large lamp that will burn in the basilica's portico throughout the coming year.
It was the inaugural event of a jubilee year that will run until June 29, 2009, in commemoration of the 2,000th anniversary of the apostle's birth.
Seated near Patriarch Bartholomew, the pope said in a homily that the Pauline year should send a strong signal of Christian unity. He warmly greeted the other Christian representatives, including many who had come from areas where St. Paul evangelised - in the Holy Land, Syria, Greece, Cyprus and Asia Minor.
St Paul understood the essential value of Christian unity because he understood the Church as the "body of Christ", the pope said. In St. Paul's time and in every age, repairing divisions is an urgent task, he said.
"We are not gathered here to reflect on a past history that is irretrievably surpassed. Paul wants to speak to us - today," Pope Benedict said.
"His faith is not a theory, an opinion about God and the world. His faith is the impact of God's love on his heart. And so this same faith is love for Jesus Christ," he said.
The important thing for St Paul, the pope said, was never to hide the truth or sacrifice it in order to obtain a "superficial harmony".
After the pope spoke, Patriarch Bartholomew also delivered a short homily, noting St Paul's immense influence on the history of the churches of the East.
In joining the Greek language and the Roman mentality of his time, the patriarch said, St Paul had freed the Church from any kind of restricted outlook and laid the foundations for the "catholic," or wide-ranging, scope of its mission.
The pope said St Paul's emphasis on unity applied not only to Christian churches, but also in a wider sense to a modern culture that is marked by persistent conflicts and divisions.
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