Pope Paul VI’s legacy of ecumenism and compassion offers a powerful model for unity in a divided church and world.
People say you never forget a first impression, but I honestly couldn’t tell you my first impression of St. Pope Paul VI. At first, I suppose, Paul VI was just another Roman numeral hanging on the 5-square-foot chart of 265 pontiffs that hung in our family computer room. Many Catholics may have come to know Paul VI as the author of Humanae Vitae (On Human Life), perhaps the most hated and misunderstood encyclical. Paul VI, whatever his humble beginnings in my own faith life, has become an indispensable patron saint for living the Christian life in a divided church and world. A leader who made revolutionary ecumenical gestures, Paul VI has become, for me, a treasured fellow pilgrim on the journey of Christian unity.
Paul VI felt a special pastoral tenderness for the Christians in the Holy Land. In his 1974 apostolic exhortation Nobis in Animo, the pope addressed the serious challenges Palestinian Christians faced due to the Israeli occupation. Pilgrims to the Holy Land, the pope said, should not enjoy their faith’s physical heritage in the shrines and chapels marking moments in salvation history without considering the plight of the present-day church—“the living stones”—who kept the Christian faith alive in the land of its birth. This community, he said, “has suffered almost innumerable adversities.” In response, he instituted a yearly collection—traditionally taken on Good Friday—to support Christians in Jerusalem.
When Pope Francis opened the synodal way in October 2021, he echoed a frequent catchphrase of Paul VI: “journeying together” or “walking together.” Paul VI told the observers at the Second Vatican Council, “We are on the way together.” Rather than calling for a “return to Rome,” he recognized that all Christians are on pilgrimage together.
In a world of iron rigidity, divisions, and self-certainty, Paul VI reminds Catholics that tenderness costs us nothing, that it will not kill us to open our ears to those who think differently, and that there is no other way forward for us than the way toward unity. To journey toward God is to journey toward our sisters and brothers in Christ. The church’s destination—heaven, where we will be drawn up into the love of God, the unity of Creator, Christ, and Spirit—can only be reached together.
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Renée Roden is the author of the forthcoming Tantur: Seeking Christian Unity in a Divided City (Liturgical Press). You can learn more about her work at reneedarlineroden.com.
With thanks to US Catholic, a publication of the Claretian Missionaries, a Roman Catholic religious community of priests and brothers dedicated to the mission of living and spreading the gospel of Jesus.
