For Fisher, the most important initiative of his archiepiscopate was to advance the cause of Christian unity. Strengthening ties did not necessarily mean converging theologically. To Fisher, better relations grew out of free communication and mutual respect. In his speech at Cambridge in 1946 he urged full communion between the episcopal and non-episcopal churches, in which there were no barriers to exchanges of ministers and ministries. His efforts led to the prospect of union with the Methodists, and his visit to Rome in 1960 to meet Pope John XXIII. "The Guardian" reported that Fisher was received in the Vatican "not as a bishop on pilgrimage but as the Father in God of the entire Anglican Communion"; the visit marked the end of centuries of hostility between Canterbury and Rome. Parallel with his quest for inter-church Christian unity was Fisher's concern to strengthen the community between the various international Churches within the Anglican Communion. Partly because of the enforced separation caused by the Second World War, worldwide Anglican ties had become weak. Fisher began in 1946 with a visit to Canada and the United States, during which he established or strengthened links between the English and the North American episcopates. After that he travelled continually to almost every part of the Anglican Communion, establishing that principle that "an Archbishop of Canterbury must be peripatetic" globally. He arranged for the Anglican Communion to have a chief executive officer, the first of whom was Bishop Stephen Bayne of the US.