AS CARDINALS prepare to elect a new pope in a week’s time, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that although the breach with Rome was “not yet at an end”, there had been an irreversible reconciliation between Anglicans and Catholics during the reign of John Paul II for his successor to build on.

Rowan Williams, the first Archbishop of Canterbury to attend a pope’s funeral, said “the roots we have put down in recent years are far too deep to uproot”. Dr Williams, who sat in the front row opposite the papal coffin at last Friday’s funeral, said: “It seemed to me absolutely natural that the Archbishop of Canterbury should come to share the prayers, hopes, grief and thanksgiving of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.”

Bishop John Flack, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Rome, said that “when John Paul II became Pope 27 years ago, many Anglicans would not have accepted that he was the leader of all Christians”. Many theological issues remained to be ironed out, and differences over gay bishops or the role of women in the Church remained. “This is not quite the end of the Reformation,” Bishop Flack said. But few doubted that the late Pope had been “a figurehead for all Christians, a parish priest to the whole world”.

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who conducted a joint prayer service in Rome with Dr Williams, said that ecumenism was “a road with no exit” and that “we desire from the depths of our hearts that our churches should come closer”.

Many Catholics in Italy were struck at the weekend by the Anglican service of blessing for the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, which was broadcast live there.

Bishop Flack said for many Catholics, the Windsor service had brought home the question of whether divorced people should be allowed to remarry in church or take Holy Communion. He said the Church of England debated in public vital issues which the Roman Catholic Church tended to keep private, but which it would also have to face under a new pope. “We need to learn from each other,” he said.

The 115 cardinals who will choose the next pope began a week of “intense silence and prayer” yesterday and, in an unprecedented move, agreed to end media interviews. Before the ban, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Archbishop of Cologne, told a German paper that there were no clear favourites and “probably no firm alliances”.

There are 117 cardinals under 80 and eligible to vote, but two — Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Philippines and Cardinal Alfonso Antonio Suarez Rivera of Mexico — are too ill to attend.

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Picture galleries from the Pope’s funeral

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