ROME (MEOR) – The president of the World Methodist Council Bishop Dr. Debra Wallace-Padgett and WMC general secretary Rev. Dr. Reynaldo Ferreira Leao Neto met Pope Francis in private audience on Monday, 16 December 2024. They were accompanied by the Rev. Matthew A. Laferty, director of the Methodist Ecumenical Office Rome. Cardinal Kurt Koch and Fr. Martin Browne OSB from the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the Rev. Lee Padgett were also in attendance.

In welcoming Bishop Wallace-Padgett and Dr. Neto, Pope Francis said, “for a long time, Methodists and Catholics were estranged and wary of each other. Today, however, we can thank God, that for almost 60 years, we have been progressing together in reciprocal knowledge, understanding, and love.”

Pope Francis continued, saying, “opening ourselves to one another has brought us closer and made us realize that reconciliation is a task of the heart. When the Heart of the Lord Jesus touches our hearts, he transforms us. This is how our communities will be able to unite their differing minds and wills in order to let themselves be guided by the Spirit as brothers and sisters.”

RELATED: Read Pope Francis’ remarks to the delegation from the World Methodist Council

Bishop Wallace-Padgett responded to Pope Francis by thanking him for the warm welcome. She remarked that Catholics and Methodists share a common faith in Jesus Christ and are called to work together. She reminded Pope Francis of the commitment of the World Methodist Council to migrants and refugees and accompanying its member churches as they minister to and with migrants. She also reaffirmed the WMC’s commitment to the Methodist Ecumenical Office Rome as a central conduit of the relationship between the WMC and the Catholic Church. She thanked Pope Francis for welcoming MEOR’s director Rev. Matthew A. Laferty.

The delegation presented several gifts to Pope Francis. The gifts included:

• a reproduction of a portrait of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, a leader and preacher in the early Methodist societies in England,
• a photograph of Dinka women in South Sudan returning home from work by Methodist photojournalist Paul Jeffrey,
• a book of Wesley hymns in Spanish, and
• a contemporary Methodist prayer book.

Following the presentation of gifts, the group prayed the Lord’s Prayer together.

Pope Francis last met with the WMC president and general secretary, along with the WMC steering committee and Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission, in October 2017 for the 50th anniversary of the international Methodist-Catholic dialogue. In 2017 the Rev. Dr. Jong Chun Park and Bishop Ivan Abrahams were president and general secretary respectively.

Dr. Park was a fraternal delegate to the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church in 2023 and 2024 and met Pope Francis in private audience on several occasions.

Bishop Wallace-Padgett and Dr. Neto were elected to their offices in August 2024 at the World Methodist Council meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden. They are visiting Rome from 16 -19 December 2024 on their first inaugural visit to Rome and the Vatican. In addition to their meeting with Pope Francis, they have meetings planned with various Vatican offices, leaders of the Methodist and Waldensian churches, members of the diplomatic corp, and Catholic organizations based in Rome.