Historical visit of the Pope to an Anglican church in the Eternal City.

Today my parish church, All Saints' Anglican Church in Rome, had the pleasure to welcome Pope Francis himself. Needless to say it was a remarkable occasion, the first of its kind, before today Popes had only visited Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The rather long service of Evensong began with the dedication of our new icon of Saint Saviour by artist Ian Knowles from the Bethlehem Icon School in Israel. Then we proceeded to renew our baptismal vows and subsequently the altar party (led by me) reached the sanctuary while His Holiness slowly sprinkled our worshippers with holy water under the thundering notes of Stanford's setting of Psalm 150 to Anglican Chant. The Pope then preached about charity and mercy, reminding us of our brotherly relationship and the path of faith that we keep following together. Sharing prayer with the Holy Father, believe me, is a humbling experience. Then it was the time of the peace, which we all gladly shared with His Holiness, from the highest ranking members of the Church of England, to the sick, elderly and young of our church community, sharing the peace with Pope Francis really didn't require any additional words, the physical contact was enough to give us a sense of peace and hope. As customary it was then the time for questions, two answers from the Pope got stuck in my head: that we have to understand that when our Churches split times and circumstances were different, but we still share a love for Jesus Christ and his saints and much of our traditional way of practicing Christianity is unchanged, he then moved to an especially moving answer, he explained how we can look to the new churches of the global south, how we can worship together where canon law or theology can't get, as in the case of a diocese in his familiar Argentina where local Anglicans and Catholics worship at the same churches and services depending on the availability of the clergy. On this occasion our church was also twinned with its namesake Roman Catholic partner, with whom we recently started a new service for helping the homeless and the hungry of this large city. Gifts were then exchanged as we sang the beautiful strains of the hymn "For all the saints". Today was an especially touching and humbling experience, we will surely treasure it in our hearts for the years to come. This is truly God's own handiwork. That they may all be one.