Director of the Centre is the Very Revd David Richardson who is the Archbishop of Canterbury's Representative to the Holy See. In welcoming the Prime Minister, Dean Richardson noted that this was not only the first visit to the Centre of an Australian Prime Minister but the first visit of a head of government. He commented on the increasingly important place of religion in world affairs and the global role in forming opinion and leading thought of the Pope himself. The Anglican Centre, he said, served as a living reminder to the Holy See of the strong and deep commitment of the Anglican Communion to full visible unity with the Roman Catholic Church.
The four decades since the Centre was established have seen a number of significant agreements reached on matters ecclesiological and theological. Nevertheless, said David Richardson, unity needs more than theological agreements; it needs the will to work and go on working, the patience to wait in hope and the grace to love and go on loving. These are what the Anglican Centre in Rome does by the friendships it builds, through prayer, through study undertaken together in the Centre's library and through the courses which the Centre runs.