The Archbishop of Canterbury has continued her pilgrimage to Rome with a visit to St Paul's Within the Walls, the first non-Catholic church to be built in the city since the Reformation.
On the second day of her visit to the city, Sarah Mullally gave a homily during Evensong at St Paul's, which is one of just a handful of Anglican churches in Rome.
Before the service Mullally prayed at the Papal Basilica and the Cathedral of St John Lateran, and the Papal Basilica of St Mary Major, where she prayed at the tomb of the late Pope Francis.
During her sermon Mullally noted the important role St Paul's Within the Walls had played in serving as a monument to positive ecumenical relations between the Catholic Church and Anglicanism.
The church, which this year is celebrating 150 years since its consecration, features bronze doors designed in 1966 to commemorate the 1960 meeting between the then pope, John XXIII and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.
Mullally said that “the very doors of this church speak of Christian unity".
"That meeting marked a watershed moment in ecumenical relations," she said.
"This relationship was deepened in 1966 by the encounter between Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, which helped give rise to the modern ecumenical dialogue.”
The doors, she argued, represent a “theological statement … that unity is not merely an idea, but a calling: a calling to reconciliation, to deeper communion, and to a shared life in Christ that reaches beyond our divisions.”
Following in the footsteps of her predecessors, Mullally also met with the pope during her visit and joined him in prayer.
At the meeting Mullally told Pope Leo XIV, “I will remain united with you in prayer: prayer for peace in our world; prayer for justice; and prayer that every person may come to discover the fullness of life that God offers. We are united in prayer because we pray to the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Both Mullally and Pope Leo XIV used their Easter messages this year to call for peace. During her sermon Mullally echoed that call and urged a return to Christian love.
“And yet, we look at our world today and often we see something very different: instead of making justice and peace a priority, we see terrible violence inflicted on innocent people in conflicts across the globe," she said.
“In such a world, the Church cannot lose confidence in the Gospel. For the Gospel is precisely this: that life, not death, has the final word; that Christ has broken the power of violence, not by greater force, but by self-giving love.”
