In a meeting charged with symbolic significance, the President, Mrs McAleese, was received in the Anglican Centre in Rome on Saturday by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey.
While the Northern Ireland peace process and ecumenical concerns dominated their brief talk, the meeting's significance was more its location, just across the Tiber from the Vatican where both the President and Dr Carey had audiences with Pope John Paul 11.
It was the President's first meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury and afterwards she said she had found herself on the "same wavelength" as Dr Carey, who told her he was very concerned that the ecumenical movement should "not be allowed to run into the sand in an elusive quest for unity".
Referring to the significance of her meeting with Dr Carey, on the day after a Vatican audience with the Pope, the President commented: "Christian churches need to show that they have liberated themselves from the culture of conflict and that they have accepted that the diversity that we see all around us is God-given and this unity that we seek has to start from a platform that accepts that diversity is part of the world we inhabit . . .
"It was appropriate that here at the heart of Christendom, I could come and express my concerns and worries about the nature of the Christian experience in Ireland, the fact that sectarian hatred (in Ireland) mocks the image of the Christian gospel which is supposed to be a gospel of love . . . and to hear back from our Christian leaders that that experience can be reversed and to hear about their role in that reversal . . ."
Speaking in the Anglican Centre, Dr Carey said he had seen the President as "very much an ambassador of reconciliation", adding: "I was delighted to meet her today here in the Anglican Centre in Rome where the theme is that of reconciliation. We were able to talk together about reconciliation of two groups of Christians, Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland and throughout Ireland, of course . . ."
While both the President and Dr Carey confirmed that they did not discuss the question of Anglican-Catholic inter-communion, they both acknowledged that their meeting had focused on the Northern Ireland peace process: "It is very important to recognise Christ and the Christian faith in one another and to press for that generosity of spirit, at every different level; it doesn't have to be necessarily communion . . . We've got to challenge the men and women of violence," Dr Carey said.
Mrs McAleese said that Dr Carey had expressed his impression of a certain "nervousness" within British government circles about the current impasse on decommissioning, adding: "I told him that my view was, very simply, yes, it's a serious problem, it's not an impossible problem, we've already dealt with the impossible problems and we have overcome those . . ."
The President also said Dr Carey had emphasised the importance of the Northern Ireland peace process, not just for Ireland but for the entire international community, since such a process has a "transferable message".
Christian preparations for the celebration of the millennium also featured in the President's discussion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as indeed they had featured in her Friday audience with the Pope, a point underlined by Mrs McAleese, who said: "It was wonderful for me to be able to talk to the two men who represent the leadership of two of the great Christian traditions, the Anglican tradition and the Roman Catholic tradition, and to meet them in Rome and find both of them very concerned that this millennium will really be a true celebration by all Christians of the birth of Christ and that it will be a shared celebration rather than one which sees each of the Christian churches going off and having their own birthday party to which the other will not be invited . . ."
The President's meeting with Dr Carey was her last public engagement at the end of a five-day visit to Italy.