VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV concluded the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by declaring that different Christian faiths are already “one.”
“We are one! We already are! Let us recognize it, experience it and make it visible!” Leo said in his Sunday homily on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul at the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls in Rome.
As Vatican News put it, he stressed how “different Christian religions share the same faith.” His remarks were addressed to clergymen of schismatic and heretical churches including the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Anglican Communion.
Leo’s claim directly contradicts Catholic teaching as laid out in the Catechism of St. Pius X, according to which the Church is united by the “same faith,” “same worship,” “same law” “and in participation of the same Sacraments, under the same visible Head, the Roman Pontiff.” Therefore, schismatic churches which reject the authority of the pope, such as Eastern Orthodox churches, and heretical sects such as the Anglican Communion cannot be said to be unified, or “one,” with the Catholic Church.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent affirms, “It is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers that this visible head is necessary to establish and preserve unity in the Church.”
Likewise, in the encyclical Satis Cognitum, promulgated on June 29, 1896, Leo XIII taught that Christian unity is grounded in shared faith, the sacraments, and governance. The document explicitly rejected the idea of an invisible or merely spiritual Church and affirmed that full unity requires adherence to the authority established by Christ in the Catholic Church.
In his Sunday homily, Leo XIV also invoked Pope Francis’ claim that the “synodal” path of the Catholic Church “is and must be ecumenical, just as the ecumenical journey is synodal.”
“As we look toward the 2,000th anniversary of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus in 2033, let us commit ourselves to further developing ecumenical synodal practices and to sharing with one another who we are, what we do and what we teach,” said Leo.
