NEW YORK (CNS): Jesuit Father John F. Long, a leading ecumenist and one of the world’s foremost Catholic experts on Orthodoxy, died in New York on September 20 after hospitalisation for emergency cardiac surgery. He was 80 years old.
Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore presided at his funeral Mass on September 24 at the Fordham University chapel in New York.
As a member of the Vatican Secretariat (now Pontifical Council) for Promoting Christian Unity, in the 1960s, Fr Long participated in the drafting of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, Declaration on Religious Liberty and Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
From 1969-80 he headed the secretariat’s section for relations with the Orthodox Churches and from 1981 until his death he was a consultor to the secretariat and the subsequent council.
Fr Long was also on the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church from 1981, shortly after it was formed, until his death.
He participated in a number of other dialogues and represented the Holy See in contacts with the World Council of Churches.
