"If hope for the Great Jubilee is to be even partially realized, the implications for world civilization will be immense."

Preparing for the year 2000 has become, the pope himself says in Tertio Millennio Adveniente, "a hermeneutical key to my Pontificate" (n. 23). It is surprising, in a way, that this document which lays out his entire strategy, making sense of all his encyclicals and multitudinous pilgrimages and other initiatives, including those we may still expect over the next five years, should have received so little attention in the world's press. Members of the Board of Communio and the faculty of the Franciscan University of Steubenville were able to devote some time to it at a recent meeting in Ohio. Over in Oxford, at the Centre for Faith & Culture at Westminster College, I have started to organize a series of debates and consultations on certain themes of the document on the Millennium, with special attention to the need for Christian unity—reinforced by the encyclical Ut Unum Sint and the apostolic letter Orientale Lumen. In future issues, this Kairos section of Communio will include reports and reflections from these debates.

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