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The Joint Working Group is convinced that the work of the past five years has been worthwhile. At the same time a great many things remain to be done. The Lord's demand is clear: that they may be one in order that the world may believe" (John 17,21). As we face this demand we are keenly aware of how much we still fall short of giving to the world the sign of communion which should arouse its faith in the love of the Father who sends his Son to save us.

The aim of the present document is to set out briefly the concrete results of the exchanges that have already taken place, and to indicate a vision of the future in which the Joint Working Group foresees the need for constantly more dynamic relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches.

After several preliminary meetings between representatives of the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity and of the World Council of Churches, the mandate for the Joint Working Group was presented to and adopted by the Central Committee at its meeting in Nigeria in January 1965. It was thereafter also officially accepted by the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church. In working out this project, the Roman Catholic side was guided by the Decree on Ecumenism, promulgated at the end of the third session of the Vatican Council; while the representatives of the World Council of Churches based their approach on the main lines of several WCC documents that describe the nature and function of the World Council and on various statements made by the World Council on the contemporary ecumenical situation.

The formation of the WCC, and the holding of its first assembly, did not answer a number of fundamental questions about the nature of the Council and its relationship to the member churches. That task was left to the WCC's central committee at its meeting in 1950, which adopted the "Toronto Statement".