Pope and archbishop of Canterbury find common ground at talks in Rome - The Guardian

On the menu – a five-course affair, surprisingly plentiful perhaps for the era of the "poor church" – were sliced swordfish, pasta with prawns, tuna steak, semifreddo, fresh fruit and coffee.

But, as the pope met the archbishop of Canterbury for the first time on Friday – a meeting of two pragmatists creaking under the weight of centuries of fraught history – the real order of the day, at least in theory, was unity.

After visits to the tombs of both St Peter and John Paul II, Justin Welby – installed just days after the election of Pope Francis – held a "very personal" conversation with the former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. It was clear, he said afterwards, that co-operation between the churches, despite the serious issues which divide them, was "an absolute necessity". The pope, he said, seemed to him "an extraordinary humanity on fire with the spirit of Christ".

On gay marriage, Welby declared he and Francis had proved to be "absolutely at one on the issues". In a press briefing at the Venerable English College of Rome, Welby added that the pair were "equally at one on our condemnation of homophobic behaviour". The pope, for his part, said in an address that he wanted to co-operate on the "importance of the institution of the family built on marriage".

On ethical reforms of the financial system, too, the men were onside. Welby, a former oil executive citing the influences of Catholic social teaching and the need for the banking system to find "new values", said the church's leaders had "got to find a way to make that happen". Francis, earlier, had spoken of efforts to achieve social justice, "to build an economic system that is at the service of man and promotes the common good".

They also raised the role that Christianity could play in international matters, such as the ongoing conflict in Syria, and human trafficking, said the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, who joined Welby on his inaugural visit to Rome.

Such were the apparent points of commonality that, when it was announced that the archbishop would be making a more official return visit to the Vatican in December, Welby felt moved to clarify: "We're not planning on spending Christmas together. I do have a day job in England."

On this occasion, then, the deep differences that divide the Church of England and Anglican communion from the world's 1.2 billion Catholics were not the emphasis. "In terms of values and principles, there was a really strong commitment to working together … and recognising that there are major issues around that but recognising that this is an absolute necessity," said Welby.

The ordination of women was mentioned "in passing" but not dwelled on, said the archbishop, an ardent advocate for female bishops in the Church of England. In his address, Francis said he was grateful for efforts made by Anglicans to understand why his predecessor, Benedict XVI, had introduced a structure – the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham – to allow disaffected members of the C of E to convert. They did not, Welby said, discuss it any further.

"The conversation," he explained, "was about how you feel when you get up in the morning and you've got these extraordinary days, and where do you go in prayer?" Asked if the by-now-famously-maverick pontiff had given the archbishop any tips on his style, Welby, ever a quip to hand, replied: "We naturally discussed the colour of cassocks."