In March 2001, fifteen PC(USA) representatives travelled to the Vatican, on a return visit from the prior December's first-ever formal meeting. The outcome of the meetings was a joint statement in which all parties resolved to find agreement on the doctrine of justification, to recognize each other's baptisms, and to renounce Reformation-era mutual denunciations. Cliff Kirkpatrick, then stated clerk of the PC(USA), echoed the theme of Christian unity that John Paul II put forward in the 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint: "It is our deepest hope that the third millennium of Christian history will be the millennium of the reuniting of the broken body of Christ."