Board of Methodist Ecumenical Office visits Dicastery

On Wednesday 27 November, the oversight board of the Methodist Ecumenical Office Rome (MEOR) – known as The Forum – visited the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. MEOR has been the representation office and ecumenical formation centre of the World Methodist Council in Rome since 2014. The Forum, which supervises and directs the work of MEOR, meets under the joint presidency of the Revd Dr Reynaldo Ferreira Leão-Neto, General Secretary of the World Methodist Council, and the Revd Michaela Youngson, Assistant Secretary and Ecumenical Officer of the Methodist Church in Britain.

Having earlier attended the weekly General Audience of Pope Francis in St Peter’s Square, the members of the Forum were welcomed to the Dicastery by the Secretary, Archbishop Flavio Pace. The visitors then had a meeting with Fr Martin Browne OSB, the Dicastery official responsible for relations with Methodists. The meeting included an extensive discussion of the work of the Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission and on the reception of the fruits of ecumenical dialogues more generally, as well as a discussion of the recent Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome.