Leaders of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) met with Pope Francis in the Vatican on Thursday to discuss closer cooperation with the Catholic Church, particularly regarding issues of religious freedom and Christian persecution around the world.
The head of WEA, Bishop Efraim Tendero, spoke to Vatican Radio of his experience with ecumenical relations in his native Philippines, where there is strong practical cooperation on a number of shared moral issues.
Curiously, last summer, two close advisers of Pope Francis published an article criticizing historical relations between American evangelicals and Catholics in the United States, labeling their collaboration as an “ecumenism of hate.”
In an article in the Jesuit-run Italian journal La Civiltà Cattolica, Father Antonio Spadaro and Rev. Marcelo Figueroa decried those “who profess themselves to be Catholic” but express themselves in ways “much closer to Evangelicals.”
The authors found particularly upsetting that evangelicals and Catholics should work together on moral issues that they hold in common.
“They are defined as value voters as far as attracting electoral mass support is concerned,” the authors wrote, and engage in a dangerous “ecumenical convergence” over shared objectives “around such themes as abortion, same-sex marriage, religious education in schools and other matters generally considered moral or tied to values.”
Particularly interesting in the light of the Pope’s meeting with evangelicals over the question of religious liberty was the harsh rebuke offered by Spadaro and Figueroa over common collaboration between Catholics and evangelicals in this area. READ MORE
