The Reverend Professor Dr Angela Berlis – The Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism
For her outstanding contribution to Anglican-Old Catholic relations, and to the ecumenical movement more widely, as a theologian and historian.
Professor Dr Angela Berlis, a pioneering Old Catholic priest and ecumenical theologian, was one of the first women ordained in the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht, and has been central to Old Catholic ecumenism over the last thirty years, and especially to Anglican-Old Catholic relations.
After study at Bonn and Utrecht Universities, Professor Berlis worked as a scientific assistant at Bonn until 2000, and then as Lecturer in Practical Theology at Utrecht, holding this position jointly for some years with a postdoctoral fellowship in modern Church History at the Roman Catholic Faculty of Theology at Tilburg University. From 2006-2009 she was endowed Professor for ancient Catholic Church Structures, including the History and Doctrine of the Old Catholic Churches at Utrecht University. In 2009 she was appointed to the Chair in the History of Old Catholicism and General Church History at Bern University, also acting as Vice Dean and Head of the Department for Old Catholic Theology until 2017. From 2018-2020 she was Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Bern.
Professor Berlis was President of the European Society of Women in Theological Research in 2007-11, and of the Swiss Society for Theology in 2014-17. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Old Catholic academic journal Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift. Her research and publications
focus particularly on reform movements in the Western Church, Ultramontanism, Old Catholic ecumenism, and theology and gender studies. She was Co-Secretary of the Anglican-Old Catholic International Co-ordinating Council 2000-2012, and remained an active member until 2019. She is also a member of the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission and of several ecumenical dialogue committees. Her ecumenical friendships and influence are extensive, especially amongst Anglicans, Lutherans, Orthodox and Roman Catholics and her contribution to European ecumenism has been outstanding.
About The Lambeth Cross
The Lambeth Cross is awarded to those who have made an outstanding contribution to ecumenical work in support of the Church of England or to those who have made exceptional contributions to relations between the faiths.
The Lambeth Cross was originally made in 1940 under instructions received from Archbishop Lang. The form of it is based, with modifications, on an English Romanesque ivory pectoral cross of the 11th century in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The figure of the crucified Christ was adapted from the life-sized stone rood on the outside of Langford Church in Oxfordshire, which dates from about the same period or a little later. The rood at Langford has lost its head, and head on the Lambeth Cross was suggested by one of the contemporary Spanish Romanesque crucifixes which, like the rood at Langford, is closely related to the famous crucifix at Lucca known as the Volto Santo.