Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 31, 1995                   TAG: 9505310089
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: ROME                                LENGTH: Medium

POPE URGES CHRISTIAN UNITY

In an appeal for greater unity among Christians, Pope John Paul II invited leaders of other churches Tuesday to join him in a discussion on the role of the papacy, one of the most divisive issues in the history of Christianity.

But the pope, 75, made clear that the authority of his office remains absolute and supreme, a view held as an article of faith within the Roman Catholic Church and rejected by most other Christian churches.

In an encyclical on ecumenism titled ``Ut Unum Sint'' (``That They May Be One''), the pope said he had a particular responsibility to promote unity among Christians, given what he called the ``primacy'' of the Roman pope as the successor to St. Peter.

Thus, his letter said, he must heed calls ``to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation.''

According to Vatican analysts, that ``new situation'' could in time involve a shifting of some of the pope's authority to local bishops' conferences, a subject that is already under discussion within the Roman Catholic Church.

In the letter, Pope John Paul again repeated his hope that Christianity, which underwent a series of bitter, often violent schisms and divisions during the past 1,000 years, will be reunified by the year 2000.

The pope acknowledged that the papacy ``constitutes a difficulty for most other Christians, whose memory is marked by certain painful recollections,'' and as he has done on other occasions, he asked for forgiveness for the sins and errors committed in the name of the Catholic Church.

An examination of the role of the papacy is an ``immense task, which we cannot refuse and which I cannot carry out by myself,'' he said, and called on ``church leaders and their theologians to engage with me in a patient and fraternal dialogue on this subject, a dialogue in which, leaving useless controversies behind, we could listen to one another.''

Edward Cardinal Cassidy, who heads the pope's council for the promotion of Christian unity, said Tuesday that Pope John Paul was harkening back to the first 1,000 years of Christianity, when the church was still united.

``In essence, the Holy Father asks to see how the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was accepted in the first Christian millennium, to understand whether it can be accepted again in the current world,'' said Cassidy.

The encyclical praises the progress toward Christian unity achieved in the three decades since the Second Vatican Council set ecumenism as a goal.

The pope paid particular attention to relations with the Orthodox Church, which split from Rome in 1054 but which in many ways is closer to the Catholic Church in terms of doctrine and liturgy than the Protestant churches, which broke away later during the Reformation.