Pope Francis with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. 
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople offered a hopeful perspective on healing the millennium-old division between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, suggesting the historic 1054 “Great Schism” was not a sudden break, but a gradual process with tensions that “are not insurmountable.”
“Of course, problems have accumulated over a thousand years. But we are full of hope that they will be resolved in a few years,” Bartholomew said during a meeting in Istanbul with a German pilgrimage group, joined by Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Emeritus Gregory III Laham.
The visit comes ahead of the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., which defined key elements of Christian belief and set the formula for calculating Easter.
Calls for Christian unity have gained momentum in recent years. Pope Francis, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in January, hailed the “providential” coincidence of Easter falling on the same date in 2025 for both Western and Eastern churches. He urged Christians to “rediscover the common roots of the faith” and “preserve unity.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, has long advocated for a common Easter date. In 2021, he called the year 2025 an ideal moment for reform. While acknowledging the difficulty, he emphasis ed the strong support of Pope Francis and Coptic Pope Tawadros for the initiative.
Easter is currently celebrated on different dates due to the use of separate calendars: the Julian calendar by most Orthodox churches and the Gregorian calendar by the Catholic Church and much of the world. The Julian calendar is now 13 days behind, which leads to most Easter celebrations occurring on different Sundays.
However, inter-church tensions remain an obstacle. Notably, in 2018 the Russian Orthodox Church severed ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate after Bartholomew recognised the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.