As the Pope arrives in Australia, its national public broadcaster (ABC) interviewed the English Anglo-Catholic leader who announced earlier this week his intention to bring his flock with him to the Catholic Church.
RAPHAEL EPSTEIN: How many priests, bishops and parishioners would be switching?
ANDREW BURNHAM: I've absolutely no idea. ...
RAPHAEL EPSTEIN: What chance is there that you and priests and parishioners will actually join up with the Catholic Church?
ANDREW BURNHAM: Well, I think there's quite a strong chance that quite a lot of us will because there's nowhere else for us to go now and people in England, I don't know about Australia, but people in England when they go to church and are very bound up with the actual church they go to. That's the building that their parents went to or whatever.
RAPHAEL EPSTEIN: So you would like actually for yourself, priests and the people who come to your church, to become part of the Catholic Church but to stay in the churches that you're currently going to?
ANDREW BURNHAM: I think if any arrangement of that kind were possible, that would be wonderful because it would be a way of building up the unity of the body of Christ.
RAPHAEL EPSTEIN: When do you think you'll get a response from Rome?
ANDREW BURNHAM: I don't know, and I don't know what kind of response it would be. I've issued a statement through the Catholic Herald asking publicly for a gesture on the part of the Catholic Church.
I think what I've said is we must humbly ask for magnanimous gestures from our Catholic friends especially from the holy father who well understands our longing for unity.
RAPHAEL EPSTEIN: Does magnanimous gestures mean, I suppose, a rapid inclusion in the Catholic Church?
ANDREW BURNHAM: Well, I don't know. ...
In a brief interview in the plane taking him to Australia, Pope Benedict said today that he is "praying so that there are no more schisms and fractures" in the Anglican Communion, and that he does not wish to "interfere" (quite prudent words right before what may well be the last Lambeth Conference). At least not "at this moment of the debate".
