Portugal: Churches celebrate Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Lisbon, 14 Jan 2023 (Ecclesia) – The Churches in Portugal will celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which will take place from 18 to 25 January in the northern hemisphere, with the theme “Learn to do good and seek justice”.
The National Ecumenical Celebration, on a date chosen by the Department of Ecumenical Dialogue of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP) and the direction of the Portuguese Council of Christian Churches (COPIC), will take place on January 21, at 4 pm, at the Methodist church of Mirante , not Porto.
In Lisbon, a Youth Ecumenical Vigil takes place the day before, January 20, at 9.30 pm, in the Campo Grande church; this celebration, which has been taking place for several years, brings together groups from various Christian Churches.
The Archdiocese of Braga inform that the ecumenical celebration in this diocese will be hosted by the Methodist Church, on January 19, Thursday, at 21:00.
This moment of prayer in the archdiocese of Minho will be attended by D. Sifredo Teixeira, Bishop of the Methodist Church, D. Jorge Pina Cabral, of the Lusitanian Church (Anglican Communion), and D. José Cordeiro, Archbishop of Braga.
In the Diocese of Angra, disclose the ‘Igreja Açores’ portal, some initiatives of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will take place in Ponta Delgada and on the island of Flores, “where there is a tradition of ecumenical celebrations only interrupted during the pandemic period”; the materials were disseminated by the Diocesan Support Service for Ecumenical Dialogue.
In Rome, Pope Francis will preside over the celebration of Second Vespers on the occasion of the LVI Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, on January 25, at 5:30 pm local time (one hour less in Lisbon), at the Basilica of São Paulo Outside the Walls, when the Catholic Church celebrates the Conversion of the Apostle Paul (1st century).
The materials for the 2023 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity began to be prepared by a working group, which articulated the Scripture readings, themes, songs and celebrations, indicated by the Minnesota Council of Churches (USA), “more oriented to dealing with of these racial patterns”, and chose a verse from the first chapter of the prophet Isaiah as his theme: “Learn to do good, seek justice, call to reason the plunderer, defend the orphan, defend the widow” (1, 17 )”,
“The working group included multigenerational Minnesota clergy and lay leaders working on the front lines of these issues. Members of the Minnesota writing group hope that their personal experiences of racism and the devaluation of human beings will serve as a testament to the inhumanity of God’s children toward one another.”
Titles prepared and published jointly by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity (Holy See) and the World Council of Churches may be downloaded on the website of the Vatican agency.
Portugal has already prepared the base text for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which was lived with the theme ‘Behold, I am at the door and knock’ (Revelation 3, 14-22), in 1996, the preparatory meeting held- if in Lisbon.
The ‘octave for the unity of the Church’, today under another name, began to be celebrated in 1908, on the initiative of the American Paul Wattson, an Anglican priest who later converted to Catholicism.
Ecumenism is the set of initiatives and activities aimed at encouraging a return to Christian unity, broken in the past by schisms and ruptures.
The main divisions between the Christian Churches occurred in the fifth century, after the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (Coptic Church, of Egypt, among others); in the eleventh century with the decision between the West and the East (Orthodox Churches); in the 16th century, with the Protestant Reformation and, later, the separation of the Church of England (Anglican).
CB/OC