“The founders of the review, basing themselves on their intimate encounter with the Lord, knew how to harmonize culture and faith in order to announce the gospel. They united the audacity of creative thought with the most filial and most humble fidelity to the Church and her living tradition.”
– Pope John Paul II, “Address to the Group Representing
the Journal Communio,” Communio 19 (Fall 1992)
Founded in 1972 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and Joseph Ratzinger to assist in the renewal called for by the Second Vatican Council, Communio concentrates in a particular way on the essential relationship between theology and culture. Communio – a term called the key to the ecclesiology of Vatican II by Cardinal Ratzinger – refers to what is the source, the means, and goal of the Church’s life: the Trinitarian communion that graciously wills to draw all of creation into its loving embrace through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that the Spirit keeps perennially present in the communio of the Church and its universal mission.