Pope and Patriarch open Year of St Paul
By John Thavis in Rome
4 July 2008

Pope Benedict XVI with Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople during a private audience at the Vatican on June 28

Pope Benedict XVI opened the Year of St Paul last weekend with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians.

Speaking at an evening prayer service on Saturday in the Rome Basilica of St Paul-Outside-the-Walls, the Pope said that the Apostle should serve as a model for all Christians.

"Paul is not a figure of the past that we remember with veneration," he said. "He is also our teacher, an apostle and a herald of Jesus Christ for us too."

The liturgy had a strong ecumenical tone. Accompanied by Patriarch Bartholomew I and representatives of Orthodox and Anglican churches, the Pope lit the first candle from a large lamp that will burn in the basilica's portico throughout the coming year. Then the Pontiff led a procession through the Pauline door into the church, which was built near the site of St Paul's martyrdom and holds his tomb. It was the inaugural event of a jubilee year that will run until June 29 2009 in commemoration of the 2,000th anniversary of the Paul's birth.

Seated near Patriarch Bartholomew, the Pope said in a homily that the Pauline year should send a strong signal of Christian unity. St Paul understood the essential value of Christian unity because he understood the Church as the "body of Christ", the Pope said. In St Paul's time and in every age, repairing divisions is an urgent task, he said.

"Who was this Paul?" the Pope asked in his sermon. He cited the saint's own self-description as a Jew who was educated in Jerusalem according to strict ancestral law, and who later became, through an encounter with Christ, the "teacher of the gentiles in faith and truth".

The Apostle's vocation endures, the Pope said. "We are not gathered here to reflect on a past history that is irretrievably surpassed. Paul wants to speak to us today," he said.