by Clifton Kirkpatrick

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Your Holiness, we come seeking to join you as pilgrims for the cause of Christian unity in faithfulness to our Lord's high priestly prayer, "that they be all be one . . . that the world might believe" (John 17:21). It is our deepest hope that while the second millennium in Christian history may well be looked back upon as a millennium of the division of the Christian Church, the third millennium will be the millennium of the reuniting of the broken body of Christ. Standing at the dawn of this new millennium, we cannot imagine a task more urgent than furthering the unity which Christ intends for the Church.

We began this pilgrimage in response to the gracious invitation that you extended to other Christian communities in Ut Unum Sint. You asked Church leaders and theologians from other Christian traditions "to engage with me in a patient and fraternal dialogue" as to how the Successor to Peter might enable the whole Christian community to more fully manifest the unity for which our Lord prayed so fervently. We were deeply grateful for that invitation and have appreciated the opportunity to be engaged in helpful conversation with the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity around that topic.

As you may remember, a small delegation led by our moderator at that time, the Rev. John Buchanan (who is also part of our delegation today) visited with you and the Pontifical Council here in Rome in 1997. That was followed by a very helpful visit by Monsignor John Redano to the Presbyterian Center in Louisville, Kentucky in 1998. Early last year our General Assembly's Committee on Ecumenical Relations named this delegation to give increased attention to seeking unity between the Presbyterian Church and the Roman Catholic Church. We have prepared a paper entitled The Successor to Peter, which I am pleased to present to you and which has been the launching pad for a very helpful and productive dialogue with the Pontifical Council on Promoting Christian Unity, first in Louisville last December [2000] and now in the Vatican. We believe the Holy Spirit is indeed at work among us as we have come to understand one another more fully as common members of the body of Christ.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is a member of the Reformed family of churches and an active part of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, on whose executive committee I sit and on whose behalf I bring you warm Christian greetings. We have 11,500 parishes throughout the United States and Puerto Rico and work in active mission partnership with Presbyterian and Reformed Churches in some 80 nations around the world. Just as the Roman Catholic Church has been founded around an understanding of the successor to Peter, our tradition has its founding ethos in the Council of Jerusalem. One of the things which has been most helpful in our dialogue with the Pontifical Council has been our growing understanding of how these two motifs are both central to a faithful understanding of what it means to be the Church of Jesus Christ.

We rejoice in the very significant steps that have been taken between our two churches toward the goal of Christian unity since the Second Vatican Council. We have seen a liturgical and sacramental renewal in Presbyterian churches that owes much to the Second Vatican Council, while at the same time Catholic churches in our nation have seen a renewal of preaching and the centrality of the Scriptures. To participate in a Presbyterian worship service or a Catholic mass is a far more similar experience than it was a generation ago, and we are grateful to God for that. We have come to affirm a common baptism. At the grass roots level, Presbyterian and Catholic parishes are more often than not partners together in common mission and ministry in our secular society. We rejoice that our people now see each other not as "enemies" or "competitors," but as brothers and sisters in Christ.

At the same time, as we begin a new millennium, we feel a strong sense of urgency to unite more strongly together our two churches, along with other Christian churches, to manifest to the world that there is one Church of Jesus Christ in which we all participate together. We long to find a way to be together at the Lord's table. We seek to move beyond the condemnations of our past history and to be able to affirm one another as true churches of Jesus Christ. In a fragmented world, we feel a particular urgency to witness together to the unifying love and justice of Jesus Christ for a suffering and divided humanity.

Most of all, we have come on this pilgrimage because we believe with the Apostle Paul that "just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ" (I Corinthians 12:12). We earnestly seek your prayers for that part of the body of Christ known as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and we promise to pray for you and the church united together with you as the Bishop of Rome. Even more, we earnestly seek to be partners together in prayer for the unity of all of those who follow Christ.

May God's richest blessing be upon you!