HIS HOLINESS SHENOUDA’S III’S ADDRESS AT THE CONCLUSION OF HIS VISIT TO
POPE PAUL VI AND TO THE CHURCH OF ROME
10 May 1973
The visit of His Holiness Shenouda III concluded on 10 May. At noon Pope Paul VI went to the Tower of St John in the Vatican Gardens, where his distinguished guest had resided during his visit. His Holiness Shenouda III gave the following address.
Beloved Brother in Christ,
On the last day of our happy stay in Rome and in the Vatican City and on the occasion of our leave taking, we have the pleasure to thank Your Holiness, not only in our own name but also in the name of our brothers in the episcopate, the metropolitans and bishops our companions, together with the priests and laity, but also in the name of the whole Church of Alexandria and the See of St. Mark.
We, from a full heart, thank Your Holiness for all the brotherly love Your highly esteemed Person has graciously shown towards us and for all the welcome and kind reception with which we have been received in Rome and in the Vatican City since the very moment of our arrival, from the part of Your Holiness and from the part of their Eminences the Cardinals, their Excellencies the archbishops and bishops and the other prelates of the Roman Curia and the reverend priests, among whom those who have received us at the Airport and those who have accompanied us and those who have welcomed us with joy and love in Your magnificent and splendid Basilicas and gracious monasteries and other holy and historical places. We especially mention with profound acknowledgement the efforts and the pains of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. We shall not forget how we were moved with reverence and spiritual emotions at seeing churches and monasteries built on sites that had been irrigated with the holy blood of the martyrs of the Church who gave their lives for the sake of the Gospel as witnesses of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We very much admire the activities and the scholarly work of the staff of the theological institutes and research centres working in Rome, compiling books of deep and thorough investigations.
Once more and from our inmost soul, we present very many thanks to Your Holiness for Your invaluable present of the relic of St. Athanasius the Apostolic, the great father and doctor of the Universal Church, the herald of Orthodoxy against Arianism, the champion of truth who gave his life and fought the good fight in defence of the divinity of Christ. We cannot express in words how our clergy and people in Egypt would rejoice at our return with the relic of St. Athanasius. For this and for Your Holiness’s previous most precious present of the relic of St. Mark You gave to our Church in 1968, our gratitude is unspeakable.
We grasp the opportunity to lift up our hearts to the Almighty so that He may deepen our love in Him towards one another and strengthen the bonds of brotherly affections between our two apostolic Churches and that He may render success to the joint commission representing our Churches we are setting up to guide common studies leading to the full unity of the Church.
We shall always keep in our memory these happy days we spent in Rome.
We shall remember Your Holiness and Your honourable men in our prayers and we believe that Your Holiness will do the same for us. We all have to pray earnestly and humbly for the unity of the Church, for the spread of the kingdom of Heaven on earth and for the peace of the whole world. Amen.
(Information Service 22 (1973/IV) pp.8‒9. Reproduced in special issue of Information Service 76 (1991/I) pp.7‒8).