Our celebration of the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea can be considered as one of the ecumenical fruits of Vatican II – among the fruits, to use Cardinal Kasper’s phrase, that we have been encouraged and increasingly equipped to harvest in recent years. It is also good to recall that the Second Vatican Council made it possible for the Roman Catholic Church to develop ecclesial relationships with other Churches and ecclesial communities for the first time on the basis of its new theological and magisterial understanding of their ecclesial identity.

For relationships to develop and thrive at the ecclesial level they have to be accompanied by an ecumenism of the heart. Personal contacts between theologians, and religious and church leaders are needed for our ecclesial communion to deepen – and few personal contacts have been as important to the progress of our relations as the friendships that have grown between successive Popes, Ecumenical Patriarchs, Archbishops of Canterbury and other international Church leaders.

But such relationships, while always personal, can never be wholly private. Their actions in relation to one another, no less than their joint statements or dialogues, are always invested with a communal and ecclesial character.

That is why gestures of friendship, while often spontaneous, have also on occasion been carefully considered in order to determine how they might be read and interpreted. Sometimes such gestures, while personal and expressive of the friendship that lies at their core, also carry theological significance. They have the capacity to carry recognition of theological realities that written formularies have yet to express adequately or to speak of at all. But to be authentic they must flow from theological convictions that are rooted within the traditions from which they have emerged.

One of the earliest and most striking examples of a theologically significant gesture of friendship was the translation of the relic of St Andrew from St Peter’s Basilica to Patriarch Athenagoras after his meeting with Pope St Paul VI. Another example was the gift of an episcopal ring to Archbishop Michael Ramsey by Pope St Paul VI during the visit that was to prove such an encouragement to the Anglican-Roman Catholic international dialogue, then still in its infancy. In a custom that highlights the ecclesial significance of this gift, this ring is invariably worn by Archbishops of Canterbury whenever they visit the Vatican.

Was the return of the relic of St Andrew the righting of an ancient wrong? Did the giving of that ring carry with it the Second Vatican Council’s recognition of the continuity of episcopal ministry within the Anglican Communion together with a profound respect and gratitude for the fruitfulness of that ministry during the last five centuries? Both gestures reflect the ecclesial kinship that we have re-discovered thanks to the patient work of our ecumenical dialogues over the last sixty years and more.

Of a different order but no less arresting in its impact was the invitation of Pope St John Paul II to Archbishop George Carey and the Ecumenical Patriarch to assist him in opening the Holy Door at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls at the beginning of the Great Jubilee Year in 2000. This was a personal invitation to participate in an ecclesial event – a symbolic expression of the theology of redemption, with its unblocking and opening of jubilee doors for pilgrims to pass through.

For Roman Catholics, while our Communion is universal in its scope and embrace, there is nevertheless something missing – not only an eschatological incompleteness but a sense that Rome needs the Churches of East and West in order to be faithful to the gift and mark of Catholicity. This is the conviction and insight on which Professor Paul Murray has based the approach of Receptive Ecumenism. It has enabled the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) dialogue to identify and value those elements of the life of faith that we esteem in our ecumenical partners and lack in ourselves.

Our Church leaders help us to appreciate this when they pray and act together. Visible friendships and ecclesial regard between Ecumenical Patriarchs, Archbishops of Canterbury, and Bishops of Rome – alongside their readiness to recite the Nicene Creed together as fellow bishops with worldwide responsibilities – these help to steer us towards the fullness of communion for which we work and pray.