The Most Revd Leonard Dawea, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Melanesia, will lead a delegation of Anglican Primates and leaders to the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV in St. Peter’s Square, Rome this Sunday 18th.
Archbishop Dawea, who serves on the Primates’ Standing Committee and is a member of IARCCUM, will represent the Anglican Communion alongside The Most Revd Stephen Cottrell (Archbishop of York, England), The Most Revd John McDowell (Church of Ireland), The Most Revd Sean Rowe (The Episcopal Church, USA) and The Most Revd Thabo Makgoba (Southern Africa).
The delegation will represent the prayers and support of Anglicans around the world as Pope Leo is inaugurated. The delegation will also embody the commitment of the Anglican Communion to walk in friendship and partnership with the Catholic Church.
The delegation is being hosted by the Anglican Centre in Rome, which since 1966 has embodied the Anglican commitment to cultivating close ties with the Catholic Church, to welcoming Anglican visitors to Rome, and to studying and receiving the fruits of ecumenical research. The centre’s Director is the Rt Revd Anthony Ball.
Some of the representatives attending are involved in the ecumenical work of ARCIC and IARCCUM. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) is a theological dialogue that has achieved landmark agreements since 1971 and helped to shape contemporary Anglican and Roman Catholic conversations about communion, authority, and synodality. The International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) acts as a sister commission tasked with receiving the work of ARCIC and discerning ways that Anglicans and Roman Catholics can work together locally, especially at the episcopal level.
A third commission, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) is also engaged in writing a response to the 2024 publication of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity entitled The Bishop of Rome. That text marks a significant attempt by the Catholic Church to continue to engage other Christians and churches about the gift and promise of the pope’s universal ministry of primacy, a topic that ARCIC has engaged repeatedly, most recently in The Gift of Authority (1998).
The visit reflects decades of ecumenical dialogue through ARCIC, IARCCUM, and IASCUFO, as the churches continue to walk together in mission, understanding, and peace.
Archbishop Leonard Dawea left Honiara yesterday.