The sheer number of phone calls to the hospital must have made the surgeons aware that the person whom they were trying to save must be a much-loved person. Imagine what they should have felt when they got a call from the Vatican, from the Pope himself! The person who was severely injured in an accident near his home in England that day—20 July 2014—happened to be a Protestant Bishop and a close friend of Pope Francis—Bishop Tony Palmer. In spite of their best efforts the doctors could not save him. At his funeral, his tearful wife, Emiliana, read out the message from Pope Francis, in which he had referred to Bishop Parmer’s death as “a martyrdom for the purpose of Christian unity.”
Bishop Tony Palmer was a zealous crusader for Christian unity. This is why we should see him as a candle shining brightly in the gloom that surrounds us –the gloom of separation and division.
Tony Palmer was born in the U.K., and grew up in South Africa, where he met and fell in love with Emiliana, an Italian Catholic. He was ordained a priest and then a bishop by the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches (CEEC), whose leaders belong to the “convergence” movement, that seeks to combine evangelical Christianity with the liturgy and sacraments of Catholicism. Quite a few like Bishop Palmer believed that this convergence was a precursor to full unity between the Protestant and Catholic Churches.
When the family travelled frequently to Italy, where Emiliana came from, they came into contact with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal that has absorbed some evangelical and Pentecostal traditions. The Renewal brought her back to the Catholic Church and made Palmer feel increasingly at home with Catholic traditions. In 2003 they moved to Italy to work with Matteo Calisi, head of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Italy.
Palmer and Calisi, as part of their missions around the world, went to Buenos Aires in 2006. Its Archbishop happened to be Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who had overcome his initial reservations about the charismatic renewal and supported enthusiastically a joint Catholic-evangelical gathering that year in Buenos Aires. That is when the friendship between the Catholic Cardinal and the Evangelical Bishop blossomed. They became close friends, who kept in touch through the telephone, email and occasional meetings. Something Bishop Palmer did not expect happened in 2013. His close friend and spiritual father, Cardinal Bergoglio, became Pope Francis! A few months later Francis surprised him with a phone call inviting him to the Vatican. They met on 14 Jan 2014, when the Pope told him that nothing would change their friendship. When they met again, Palmer told him that he would soon be addressing an international gathering of Protestant leaders in the U.S. and asked him if he would like to send a message. The Pope readily agreed. Palmer used his cell phone to make a video. Pope Francis addressed them as brothers and sisters and spoke of the sin of separation, and his yearning for reconciliation. “Let us allow our yearning to grow, because this will impel us to find each other, to embrace one another, and together to worship Jesus Christ as the only Lord of History,” he said in the video.
When Bishop Palmer screened the video at the conference, the delegates welcomed it ecstatically. In June 2014 Palmer took evangelical leaders to Vatican to meet the Pope. They are reported to have given the Pope a proposed Declaration of Faith in Unity for Mission and suggested it could be signed by both the Vatican and leaders of the major Protestant churches in Rome in 2017, on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. As I said earlier, Palmer died unexpectedly in July 2014 because of a road accident, but Emiliana and thousands like her in all Churches keep hoping and praying for Christian unity.
The sad truth is most of us – even priests and Religious – don’t bother. We don’t realize that the scandal of disunity among Christian Churches should be a painful ache in the heart of Jesus, who prayed to his Father that all his disciples may be one. Every January, from 18-25, we are called to observe ‘the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity’, an international Christian ecumenical initiative, encouraged by Popes. This year’s theme is, ‘Reconciliation – The Love of Christ Compels Us’ (2 Cor 5:14-20). Does the love of Jesus compel us to wish, hope and work, like Pope Francis and Bishop Tony Palmer, for Christian unity?
– Fr. M. A. Joe Antony, S.J. is at present editor, Jivan, the magazine of South Asian Jesuits and the executive secretary of and adviser to the Provincial Superior of Jesuits in Tamil Nadu. For 20 years he edited the New Leader and gave it a new life and reputation
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