Pope's visit to mark 200 years of Anglican worship in Rome

(Vatican Radio) On Sunday Pope Francis is scheduled to visit All Saints Anglican Church, where he will answer questions from the congregation, bless a newly commissioned icon of Christ the Saviour and witness a twinning with Rome’s Catholic parish dedicated to All Saints.

The afternoon visit will take the form of a short Evensong service, presided over by the pope and by the bishop of the Anglican Diocese in Europe, Robert Innes. It’s the first time a pope has visited an Anglican church in Rome and it comes as part of All Saints’ 200th anniversary celebrations.

As chaplain of All Saints for the past 18 years, Father Jonathan Boardman will be welcoming the pope to the central Rome parish, which began with a group of English worshippers back in October 1816. He talked to Philippa Hitchen about the origins of the community and about the importance of this historic papal visit….

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Fr Jonathan explains that there was no English community living in Rome during the period of the Napoleonic wars, but when peace was declared in 1815 following the Battle of Waterloo, English visitors returned to Rome in significant numbers. He notes too that the papacy had been supported, and papal states restored, in part by British intervention, so “there was a good deal more tolerance…. to permit these foreigners to worship in their own rite”.

These visitors from the north arrived in their coaches at Rome’s Porta Flaminia, he says,  and stayed close to that area. Before long, there was an English chemist, two or three English doctors and several tearooms, “so this area was the obvious place for English worship to be conducted”.

From granary chapel to neo-Gothic church 

The first clergyman to celebrate a Eucharist according to the Church of England rite was the Dean of Jersey, who was spending six months in Rome and was asked to lead worship on Sunday 27th October 1816. Fr Jonathan says there were four worshippers that first Sunday, twenty the following week and fifty the week after that, so soon they had to move out of the private apartment where they had gathered and rent somewhere to celebrate the liturgies.

After the first few years, the community was given the use of a chapel outside the Flaminian gate in a converted granary, where they worshipped from 1827 to 1887, when the first Eucharist was celebrated on Easter Day in the current neo-Gothic church building. When the pontiff of the period, Pope Pius VII, was asked about permission for Anglican worship in the city, he reportedly replied, “what the pope doesn’t know,  the pope doesn’t have to approve.”

From English ghetto to international community

Today, Fr Jonathan continues, the profile of the congregation has changed enormously to include members of over 20 nationalities, largely from Commonwealth countries and mainly English speaking. He notes there is an increasingly large number of children, thanks to an excellent education programme led by the assistant chaplain, Rev. Dana English.

Importance of first papal visit

Reflecting on the significance of the papal visit, he says “Of course it’s special, but in a sense it’s special because it should be normal” given the increasingly good relations between Anglicans and Catholics over the past 50 years. He adds that the visit marks the “crowning of our celebrations of 200 years, we feel immensely honoured, we’re full of joy, we know it’s going to be a very special moment in our memories and for our future”

Ecumenism at work in the parishes

Finally Father Jonathan recalls the “official strengthening of the IARCCUM (International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission) process last October with the archbishop of Canterbury and the pope commissioning pairs of Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops to go back to their dioceses and work together”.

Working together in service to the poor

The twinning of All Saints with the Catholic parish of Ognissanti on the Via Appia Nuova, he says, is an example of that at “grassroots level” As the only two churches in Rome dedicated to All Saints, they have worked together for the past decade and Sunday’s event will be further commitment in terms of “learning about each other’s traditions, sharing worship in as much as we can, growing in friendship and committing ourselves to working together for the service of the poor”.