Saint Athanasius
Coptic Orthodox Church
His Holiness Pope Shenouda is well known for his deep commitment to Christian unity. In an address he gave at an ecumenical forum during the International Week of Prayer for Christian Unity held at Saint Mark's cathedral in Cairo in 1974, His Holiness declared that: "The whole Christian world is anxious to see the Church unite. Christian people, being fed up with divisions and dispersion, are pushing their Church leaders to do something about Church unity and I am sure that the Holy Spirit is inspiring us." He has emphasized that Christian unity must be founded upon a unity of Faith and not upon a unity of jurisdiction.
Before his enthronement, Bishop Shenouda attended the first unofficial ecumenical consultation between theologians of the Oriental Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, in Vienna in September 1971. The agreed statement included the words: "We believe that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is God the Son incarnate; perfect in His divinity and perfect in His humanity. His divinity was not separated from His humanity for a single moment, not for the twinkling of an eye. His humanity is one with His divinity without commixture, without confusion, without division, without separation. We in our common faith in the one Lord Jesus Christ regard His mystery inexhaustible and ineffable and for the human mind never fully comprehensible or expressible." (From the Communique of the first nonofficial ecumenical consultation between theologians of the Oriental Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches, in 1971).
In May 1973, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III paid a cordial visit to His Holiness, the late Pope Paul VI in Rome. This was the first meeting between an Alexandrine and Roman Pontiff since the time of the great schism of 451 AD. Both Popes signed a common Declaration, containing, amongst other things, a confession of common Faith in the mystery of the Word Incarnate. In welcoming His Holiness to Rome, the late Pope Paul VI said, "You are indeed the head of a church whose origin goes back to the Evangelist Mark and which had in Saint Athanasius...the invincible defender of our common Nicene faith, that is, faith in the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ."
In response, His Holiness Pope Shenouda said, "We have to declare that between us there are many points of agreement in the principles of faith. As for points of difference, there is no doubt that after fifteen centuries of study, examination, and controversy, we are at much nearer grounds of agreement than our ancestors of the fifth and sixth centuries. We are all more ready and more intense in our desire to reach solutions for differences and attain simpler expressions of our common faith."
Following this historic encounter, a joint Commission was established to explore the road to full intercommunion between the two Apostolic Churches.
In June 1989, His Holiness opened the conference of the International Commission for Inter-Orthodox theological Dialogue. A part of the agreed statement said: "When we speak of the one composite (synthetos) hypostasis of our Lord Jesus Christ, we do not say that in Him a divine hypostasis and a human hypostasis came together. It is that the one eternal hypostasis of the Second Person of the Trinity has assumed our created human nature in that act of uniting it with His own uncreated divine nature, to form an inseparably and unconfusedly united real divine-human being, the natures being distinguished from each other contemplation (theoria) only....We agree in condemning the Nestorian and the Eutychian heresies. We neither separate nor divide the human nature in Christ from His divine nature, nor do we think that the former was absorbed in the latter and thus ceased to exist" (First Agreed Statement with the Byzantine Family of Orthodoxy in 1989).
Until now, His Holiness initiates and closely monitors theological dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Swedish Lutheran, and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. His Holiness is presently one of the Presidents of the World Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches.
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