The Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission – MERCIC – gives thanks for the completion of the twelfth phase of its dialogue. Members of the Commission last met in person in October 2025, in El Salvador. Since then, an editorial sub-committee has worked remotely to carry forward the task of finalising the report for this phase of the dialogue. Members approved the final draft of the report, entitled One in Faith and Ministry to the World: Reflecting on Unity and Diversity for the Mission of the Church on 7 October 2026.
The report notes that sixty years of sustained theological dialogue between Methodists and Catholics has established unambiguous agreement on the shared confession of Christian faith expressed in the Nicene Creed and in the shared faith in the primacy of God’s justifying and sanctifying grace. It urges the two communions to receive the fruits of MERCIC’s dialogue to date so as to affirm that the faith of the Apostles is professed and lived out in one another’s communions. Based on this, the report encourages public acknowledgment by Catholics and Methodists of the presence and action of God’s Spirit in the constitutive elements that build up our respective communions, and so affirm them as effective mediations of God’s saving grace.
The Commission believes that the ecumenical kairos moment in which we now find ourselves invites our churches to take formal steps to recognise the communion we share and to receive the agreements reached in our dialogue over the last sixty years. In doing so, the report seeks not only to identify a point of arrival in the relationship between Methodists and Catholics, but a point of departure. It therefore also offers a methodology to chart a way forward, suggesting concrete steps that our respective communions might take in order to recognise and receive the communion that exists between us.
Although the full text of One in Faith and Ministry to the Word has not been released yet, a number of significant events will take place in October 2026 to mark the completion of this twelfth phase of the Methodist-Catholic international dialogue. On Monday 19 October, the Commission’s steering committee will present the report to the General Secretary of the World Methodist Council in London. Later that day, they will speak about the document at a seminar in Wesley House Cambridge. On Wednesday 21 October, they will present the report to the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome, and will later speak about it at a seminar at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). They also hope to greet His Holiness Pope Leo XIV after the weekly General Audience in St Peter’s Square.
The full text of One in Faith and Ministry to the Word will be published in the coming months, when the necessary institutional procedures of the Holy See have been completed. Subsequently, it will be presented for reception at the next meeting of the World Methodist Conference in Manila, the Philippines in 2029. Continuing what has been MERCIC’s practice to date, the document will thereafter be known also as The Manila Report.
The Commission is made up of:
Methodist Members
Revd Prof. Edgardo A. Colón–Emeric (Co-Chair), United States of America
Revd Matthew A. Laferty (Co-Secretary), Methodist Ecumenical Office, Rome
Dr Jung Choi, United States of America
Revd Prof. Blanches de Paula, Brazil
Prof. Geordan Hammond, United Kingdom/United States of America
Bishop Lizzette Gabriel Montalvo, Puerto Rico (2022 meeting)
Revd Prof. Glen O’Brien, Australia
Revd Dr Hermen Shastri, Malaysia
Prof. Lilian Cheelo Siwila, South Africa
Catholic Members
Archbishop Shane Mackinlay (Co-Chair), Australia
Revd Martin Browne OSB (Co-Secretary), Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, Rome
Prof. Catherine E. Clifford, Canada
Revd Anthony Currer, United Kingdom (2022 and 2025 meetings)
Revd Prof. Gerard Kelly, Australia
Sr Prof. Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu DDL, Nigeria
Revd Prof. Daniel Franklin Pilario CM, Philippines
Revd Prof. Jorge Scampini OP, Argentina
Dr Clare Watkins, United Kingdom
