Catholic Ecumenism Bears Fruit!

Catholics interested in ecumenism will be delighted to hear some great news from the good folks over at Rorate Caeli: 3,000 Assyrians Received into the Catholic Church! A bishop (Mar Bawai Soro, pictured at left), six priests, 30 + seminarians, and about three thousand faithful of the Assyrian Catholic Apostolic Diocese were welcomed back into the fold on the great feast of Pentecost. The number is perhaps not insignificant: "And there were added that day about three thousand souls" (Acts 2:41).

This is a wonderful example of Catholic ecumenism as it is so clearly enunciated by Pope Pius XI in his 1928 Encyclical Letter Mortalium animos (On Religious Unity), in which he teaches that "the union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it..." (paragraph 10).