The 32 students from Bossey arrived on 19 January and will remain until 26 January. The visit is an opportunity for the students to understand the structure and nature of the Roman Catholic Church.
The students are in Rome as part of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated every year from 18-25 January.
Vatican News spoke to two Bossey students about their visit to Rome: Tobias Adam of the Protestant Church in Switzerland, and the Rev. Veronica Brilliant, from Indonesia’s Batak Christian Protestant Church.
“I think it’s a very, very important week,” says Adam, “because it gives us a taste of what unity is all about.”
During the week, he said, participants “pray together, stand in front of our God together, and get to know each other’s traditions. I think that prayer is such a beautiful space to do that, because it’s not only about theological differences or what separates us, but what unites us – and that’s our faith in one, triune God.”
“I was thinking about Pope John Paul II’s enyclical Ut Unum Sint (That all might be one),” adds Brilliant.
“We have our own tradition, we have different backgrounds, but in the end we stand together as one body – with Christ at the head.”
The study visit to the Vatican and Rome is organized jointly with the Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity, which is the department of the Vatican responsible for the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches.
The visit to the Vatican City State and Rome, is part of the study module Ecumenical Study Visits. In addition to the Vatican, students have also visited the Taizé community, Swiss Protestant parishes, and the Orthodox Centre in Chambésy.