At the beginning of March, the Vatican announced the retirement of Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president since 1989 of the pontifical council for promoting Christian unity, and his replacement by Walter Kasper, the council's secretary.

A week earlier, Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, hosted a farewell dinner for the retiring president in Geneva. Setri Nyomi, a guest at the dinner, paid tribute to Cardinal Cassidy for his leadership of the council in the previous eleven years and presented him with a plaque of St Pierre, Geneva - the mother-church of the Calvinist Reformation.

Presentation to Cardinal Cassidy

  It is with pleasure that I present to you on behalf of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches this small token of our esteem.
  The spire of St Pierre in Geneva was visible to the Roman Catholic Bible scholar, Ben F Meyer, as he penned his book, The Church in Three Tenses (New York: Doubleday, 1971). In an introductory word, he mused over its significance: "...through the centuries up till our own, this ancient church and courtyard was the citizens' gathering place in times of celebration or crisis - when the Savoyards had been repulsed, when the French were at the city gates... For centuries, it was the seat of a prince-bishop. Later its pulpit became a nerve centre of the Reform."
  For a Catholic who, years before, had lived in Rome, it was natural to compare the cathedral of St Pierre and St Peter's Basilica, to compare, too, the cities in which they are set. "Rome is terra-cotta, noisy, cheerfully cynical. Geneva is grey, sober and smug." This is a little unkind to both cities!
  What remains true is, as Meyer says, that the two cities have very different religious histories. And this is also true of our two Reformed and Roman Catholic traditions.
  The years in which you have led the pontifical council for promoting Christian unity have seen us take significant steps forward in friendship and mutual understanding. They have also been years in which we have wrestled with the legacy of our divergent histories and different perspectives.
  The church "in the past tense" gives us the task of reconciling conflicting memories. The church "in the present tense" finds us, happily, engaged in civilized conversation. We look forward with eagerness to a church "in the future tense", when we can be joined, all of us, and in spite of our diversities, in open fellowship.
  We are committed, as we know you and your colleagues in the pontifical council are, to continue our common ecumenical journey. We are grateful for your companionship in the journey so far, and wish you God's blessing in your retirement.

Setri Nyomi

Cardinal Kasper has written many books on theology and has wide experience as a theologian. From 1961 to 1964 he was assistant to Hans Küng - now persona non grata with the Vatican - at the University of Tübingen in Germany; from 1970 to 1989 he was professor of dogmatic theology. In 1979, he became one of a dozen Catholic theologians in the Faith and Order Commission, arguably the most ecumenical theological forum in the world; and in 1989 he was appointed Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart.

Kasper is widely regarded as progressive in his views. In January, he gave an interview to the Austrian Catholic magazine, Die Furche, in which he was politely dismissive of Dominus Iesus, a statement published last year by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

Dominus Iesus stated baldly that churches which grew out of the Reformation in 16th-century Europe were not "churches in the proper sense".

"That affirmation offended other people," Walter Kasper told Die Furche, "and if my friends are offended, then so am I. It's an unfortunate affirmation - clumsy and ambiguous."

It is probably going too far to describe Kasper, as a leading newspaper in Rome did, as an "anti-Ratzinger". It is clear, however, that the tone of the pontifical council under his leadership will be rather different from that of the heresy-hunting congregation for the doctrine of the faith.

WARC warmly welcomes the appointment of Cardinal Kasper, and looks forward to continuing with him the friendly, if occasionally frank, relationship that we have enjoyed with the pontifical council under his predecessor.