HALIFAX, CHARLES LINDLEY WOOD, VISCONTE DI - Enciclopedia Cattolica, Vol. VI, p. 792

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

HALIFAX, CHARLES LINDLEY WOOD, Viscount of. — English statesman, b. 7 June 1839 in London, d. 19 January 1934 at Doncaster, Hickleton Hall. From an early age he showed a lively sensitivity to religious questions, to which he devoted himself throughout his life. Already in 1866, in a letter to Father Dousset, whom he had met a few years earlier during a stay in Rome, he outlined clearly the task he had set himself: to work tirelessly to restore the unity of all Christendom and, in particular, that of the Catholic and Anglican Churches. The following year, in 1867, H. was appointed president of the English Church Union, the association founded in 1859 to restore unity within the Church of England. H., however, understood that national unity was not true unity, which instead had to consist in «visible union with the Latin Church from which the Anglican Church had separated after the 16th century».

In 1890 at Funchal, on the island of Madeira, H. met the French Lazarist Father Portal. Between the two men discussions on union began, which soon expanded to include the Holy See. H. himself then went to Rome, where he was received by Leo XIII. Union seemed imminent, but foundered on the question of the validity of Anglican ordinations. The bull Apostolicae curae of 1896 put an end to these first attempts by H., who, however, did not abandon hope of achieving union. Indeed, after the Lambeth Appeal of 1920, H. opened wide-ranging unofficial exchanges of ideas between the Catholic and Anglican Churches: in the Malines Conversations (1921–25), a Catholic delegation led by Cardinal Mercier and an Anglican one headed by H. acknowledged theological agreement on many points, but agreement failed on the definition of the primacy of the Pope.

He set down his thoughts and inner struggles in Leo XIII and Anglican Orders (London 1912), A call to reunion (ibid. 1922), Reunion and the Roman Primacy (ibid. 1925), Further considerations on behalf of reunion (ibid. 1926), The conversations at Malines 1921–25 (ibid. 1927), The conversations at Malines: documents (ibid. 1930).

BIBL.: F. Datin, Lord H. et la reunion des Eglises, in Etudes, 173 (1922), pp. 533–44; G. Cel, Le conversazioni di Malines, in Civ. Catt., 1928, II, pp. 223–34, 417–28; III, pp. 193–205; J. Schryczen, Les conversations à Malines. A propos de la mort de Lord H., in La revue générale, 67 (1934), pp. 409–24; J. G. Lockhart, C. L. Viscount H., 2 vols., London 1936; J. De Bivort de la Saudée, Anglicans et catholiques. Le problème de l'union anglo-romaine (1833–1933), Paris 1940, passim; id., Documents sur le problème de l'union anglo-romaine (1921–27), ibid. 1949.

SILVIO FURLANI