Anglican exhibition opens at Vatican

An exhibition on the history of the Anglican church has opened at the Vatican Museum to coincide with the Royal Jubilee. Entitled: 'Anglicanism and the Western Church: Continuity and Change', the show has been organized in collaboration with Norwich Cathedral and the British Embassy at the Vatican. The show was launched on Monday by American Cardinal Edmund Szoka, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State, in the presence of German Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Rev Stephen Platten, dean of Norwich Cathedral. In his forward to the exhibition guidebook, the Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, said he hoped the show would foster "ecumenical friendship." The exhibition, which is being held under the frescoes of the Sistine Hall, includes 21 panels that narrate in pictures the history of Great Britain's evangelization and the consolidation of the Church in the first centuries of the Middle Ages. There is a section on the schism caused by Henry VIII in the 16th century and, lastly, a section on the rapprochement between London and Rome, which made rapid progress in 1960 when Pope John XXIII received Geoffrey Fisher, then archbishop of Canterbury, in the Vatican. Another decisive gesture in the rapprochement between the two Churches took place in Rome in 1966 with the visit of Michael Ramsey, another archbishop of Canterbury. Paul VI gave his episcopal ring to the Anglican primate as a sign of friendship and hope in a future communion. The ring is on display in the exhibition. Speaking on Vatican Radio, Cardinal Kasper said the exhibition was a "small, but important step" toward unity, "because we must know our history in order to face a common future."