Pope Francis kisses the cross of a bishop from the India-based Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church after a meeting in the library of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican Nov. 11, 2024. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
VATICAN CITY — The Christian saints in heaven enjoy full unity and should inspire all Christians to continue to pray and work together for the unity of the churches, Pope Francis told the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East.
The unity in faith the Christian churches are seeking through their ecumenical theological dialogues "has already been achieved by the saints of our churches," Pope Francis told Catholicos Awa III, the patriarch of the church based in Iraq.
During the meeting Nov. 9, Pope Francis announced that he was adding to the Roman Martyrology the feast of St. Isaac of Nineveh, "one of the most venerated fathers of the Syro-Oriental tradition, acknowledged as a teacher and a saint by all traditions." The saint was a seventh-century bishop and theologian who died in Nineveh, near what is Mosul, Iraq, today.
The Roman Martyrology is a Catholic liturgical book with more than 6,500 individual names and close to 7,000 unnamed martyred "companions" organized as a calendar; it lists the saints and blesseds whose feast is celebrated by the Catholic Church each day and provides a small biography of each.
The saints "are our best guides on the path toward full communion," the pope told the group.
St. Isaac's feast day falls, together with 4th-century theologian and hymnographer St. Ephrem the Syrian, on Jan. 28.
He said he decided to add St. Isaac to the Catholic calendar "with the agreement of Your Holiness and the patriarch of the Chaldean (Catholic) Church and encouraged by the recent synod of the Catholic Church on synodality, which noted that the example of the saints of other churches is 'a gift that we can accept by including their commemoration in our liturgical calendar.'"
Catholicos Awa's visit to the Vatican marked the 30th anniversary of the common Christological declaration signed by St. John Paul II and Catholicos Dinkha IV, "which ended 1,500 years of doctrinal controversy regarding the Council of Ephesus," Pope Francis said. "That historic declaration recognized the legitimacy and accuracy of the varied expressions of our common Christological faith as formulated by the Fathers in the Nicene Creed" regarding how Christ was both fully human and fully divine.
While divided Christians must continue to pray together and work together as they await full communion, "theological dialogue is indispensable in our journey toward unity, since the unity we yearn for is unity in faith," the pope said.
But "the dialogue of truth must never be separated from the dialogue of charity and the dialogue of life. In this way, it is a complete and human dialogue," Pope Francis said.
Two days later, Pope Francis welcomed members of the synod of the India-based Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church to the Vatican for the first time.
"Your church, heir to both the Syriac tradition of St. Thomas Christians and the Reformed tradition, rightly calls itself a 'bridge church' between East and West," Pope Francis told the bishops.
As the world's Christians seek unity, the pope said, they must cooperate in a "synodal" way, recognizing each other's baptism and the gifts that flow from it, which should be shared to strengthen all Christians.
The final document of the recent Catholic Synod of Bishops on synodality encouraged "ecumenical synodal practices, up to and including forms of consultation and discernment on matters of shared and urgent concern," the pope noted.
Emphasizing again the need for theological dialogue, which the Vatican launched with the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church only a year ago, Pope Francis told them that "in the meantime, we must walk together, pray together and work together. All together. All together."
Jesus prayed that all his disciples would be one so that the world would believe, but at the same time, the pope said, "I am convinced that working together to witness to the Risen Christ is the best way to bring us closer together."
"Therefore, as our recent synod proposed, I hope that one day we can celebrate an ecumenical synod on evangelization -- all together," he said. "And this synod will be to pledge, to pray, to reflect and to commit together to a better Christian witness, 'so that the world may believe.'"
— Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service