ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER PAUL VI
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES
AND PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENTS

Wednesday, 26 May 1976

Dear brethren,

we are happy to welcome you today.

You have come from certain Pentecostal Churches and from Pentecostal movements in other confessions to meet with our Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and its collaborators, in order to reflect together on prayer, on spirituality and on related aspects of theology. In doing so, you have been dealing with spiritual resources of which the whole human family has urgent need. Your exchanges have been a testimony to the living power of the Spirit of God experienced in the lives of Christians and offered to all who will accept it. You have spoken together of how faithful souls participate in the reality of God. We believe this is a reality which establishes itself among the faithful as a visible communion, so that they are united not only by a spiritual relationship on the level of mystery and the invisible, but also on the visible level of human realities transformed by the Spirit. It is a communion expressed in the fellowship of the Church which seeks always, according to our Lord’s will, to become perfect in unity. How untiring all who love this Lord of ours must be in working to overcome all the causes of division and separation that still impede the fullness of this communion.

As you come to the conclusion of the present phase of your work, we shall learn with great interest the outcome of your studies and give attentive consideration to what they indicate for the future of our relationship.

Let us continue to walk together in the paths of understanding and growing Christian love, listening with docility and care to what the Spirit is saying today, and ready to move into his future with joy and trust.