00:00It's a sad day as we mourn the loss of Pope Francis, who was a Christian leader who touched
00:06the hearts of the whole world, and Christians of all denominations, including me, as a member
00:13of the Church of England. When I sat and spoke with him a couple of years ago, and when I went
00:18to see him, to be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I thought, maybe I'll go in,
00:22I'll meet the Pope, we'll shake hands, exchange pleasantries, and that'll be the end of it.
00:27After all, you know, I'm an Anglican Archbishop, not a Roman Catholic. So we went to see him,
00:32we did exchange pleasantries, we did shake hands. I was thinking, well, maybe that's it,
00:36maybe the visit's over, when he said, oh, well, shall we go and sit down? And we went to an
00:41adjacent parlour, we sat down, and we talked for about half an hour. And that's when he
00:46said to me, we must work together, we must walk together, we must pray together, this
00:51great ecumenical vision for the whole Church. But he also said things like, you know, when
00:57it comes to unity, we, the Church, need to get on with it and let the bishops and the
01:02archbishops and the popes and the theologians catch up, that unity is something we already
01:08have in Jesus Christ. We just need to make it visible in the life of the Church today.
01:13Now, that isn't easy, but it's a wonderful vision. And probably the thing that had the biggest
01:19impact on me, something which I'm still working out in my ministry today, is right at the end
01:24of our visit, he said, let us pray. And when we prayed together, of course, the prayer that
01:33we said was the Lord's Prayer. Now, for the first time, I mean, I've said the Lord's Prayer
01:39thousands of times, I say it every day. But sitting there, saying the Lord's Prayer with
01:45Pope Francis, the opening word of the Lord's Prayer suddenly struck me. Our, our Father,
01:53our God. And what that means, therefore, is that everybody else who says this prayer is
02:00my sister and my brother, whether I like it or not. These are the people that God has
02:06made into his Church. And just saying the Lord's Prayer with Pope Francis changed me, changed
02:16and renewed and refreshed my understanding of what it is to be the Church, that we belong
02:21to each other across these denominational barriers. And then I think, what a message for the world.
02:27We live in a world that's so divided, you know, where the Church itself has made many mistakes
02:33and failings. We need to be a humble Church, we need to be a penitent Church, but we also
02:40need to be a Church where we recognise our common humanity and our belonging one to another.
02:46That's what Pope Francis reawakened in me, and I believe that will be his great legacy, both
02:52to the Church, but also to the world.
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