UNITED IN COMMUNION, BUT NOT ABSORBED

UNITED IN COMMUNION, BUT NOT ABSORBED
Understanding the Pope’s Welcome

By Bishop Peter J. Elliott
Auxiliary Bishop, Melbourne

AT their November Meeting, 2009, the members of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference appointed me their Delegate for the Australian project of establishing “a Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans who wish to enter full communion with the Catholic Church”, to use the words of Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.

Bishop Peter J. ElliottBefore I explain what this involves, I should introduce myself. I was born into Anglicanism, in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. My father, Rev. Leslie Llewelyn Elliott, was for some time President of the Australian Church Union. While studying theology at Oxford, in St Stephen’s House, I followed my conscience and was reconciled to “Rome” in 1968. I then studied for the priesthood in Melbourne and was ordained in 1973. After parish appointments, work as a bishop’s secretary and doctoral study in Rome, I served for ten years in the Roman Curia, Pontifical Council for the Family. I returned to Melbourne in 1997 to work for Archbishop Pell in preparing the religious education texts, To Know, Worship and Love. Then I served as a parish priest and Director of the John Paul II Institute before ordination to the episcopate in June 2007.

Am I grateful for my Anglican heritage? Yes, I am. Where did I first learn the Catholic Faith? At home, in the vicarage...

Read the rest of Bishop Elliott's message at The Anglo-Catholic blog.