CV NEWS FEED // The Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity is set to present a document on the primacy of the pope this week, according to a June 6 Vatican announcement.
The new document is titled, “The bishop of Rome. Primacy and synodality in the ecumenical dialogues and in the responses to the Encyclical Ut unum sint”.
The document will be presented during a livestreamed press conference at the Holy See Press Office on June 13.
“‘The Bishop of Rome’ is a study document, published with the approval of Pope Francis, summarizing for the first time the responses to the encyclical Ut unum sint and the ecumenical dialogues on the question of primacy and synodality,” the Vatican announcement notes.
Pope St. John Paull II wrote Ut unum sint, or “On commitment to Ecumenism,” in 1995, emphasizing the importance of increasing unity and communion between non-Catholic Christians and the Catholic Church.
“Essentially pastoral in character, [Ut unum sint] seeks to encourage the efforts of all who work for the cause of unity,” Pope St. John Paul II wrote.
In an article about the meaning of papal primacy, EWTN Vice President for Theology Colin Donovan, STL, wrote, “The doctrine of papal primacy upholds the divine authority of the Successor of St. Peter to rule over the entire Church with ordinary and immediate jurisdiction.”
The Catholic Church traces the doctrine of papal authority back to when Jesus granted a special authority to St. Peter in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16.
Donovan highlighted that Pope Boniface VIII wrote in the 1302 papal bull Unam Sanctum that “this authority, although it is given to man and is exercised by man, is not human, but rather divine, and has been given by the divine Word to Peter himself and to his successors in him, whom the Lord acknowledged an established rock, when he said to Peter himself: Whatsoever you shall bind etc. [Matt. 16:19].”
