At an ecumenical prayer service in honor of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Pope Francis reiterated his desire to see the East and the West celebrate Easter on a shared date. The Pope’s encouragement for a unified Easter comes in a year in which the Gregorian calendar used by the West and the Julian Calendar used by the East coincide on the date of Easter. As an added bonus, 2025 is also the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea.
Learn more about the divergent dates of Easter here.
The anniversary is even more significant in the Jubilee Year of Hope – just the virtue needed to work toward unity – because the First Council of Nicaea occurred at a time in which all of Christendom was unified, back in 325.
Aleteia previously reported that Pope Francis recalled the Gregorian calendar at a September meeting with Pasqua Together 2025, a group that represents various lay associations and movements of several Churches. There, he encouraged all initiatives that would promote Christian unity in 2025. He also noted that Easter does not belong to any particular church, but to Jesus Christ himself:
“Easter belongs to Christ! Moreover, it is good for us to ask for the grace to be ever more His disciples, allowing Him to be the one to show us the way we should follow,” Pope Francis said at the September 2024 meeting.
Not the first time
Back in 2022, the Pope was perhaps even more assertive. Speaking in November of that year to the Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, which has its See in Iraq, he referred to the patriarch's work toward a common date for Easter.
"On this point, I want to say – indeed, to repeat – what Saint Paul VI said in his day: We are ready to accept any proposal that is made together," Pope Francis said to Mar Awa III.
This is stated by Paul VI in an appendix to the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, promulgated in 1963, Sacrosanctrum Concilium.
The Pope went on to say even more:
So let us have the courage to put an end to this division that at times makes us laugh: “When does your Christ rise again?” The sign we should give is: One Christ for all of us. Let us be courageous and search together: I’m willing, yet not me, the Catholic Church is willing to follow what Saint Paul VI said. Agree and we will go where you say. I dare even to express a dream: That the separation with the beloved Assyrian Church of the East, the longest in the history of the Church, can also be, please God, the first to be resolved.
Decisive step forward
During the January prayer service, at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, the Pope once again encouraged agreeing upon a unified date. He indicated that the Catholic Church would be amenable to accepting a unified date selected by the East:
“I renew my appeal that this coincidence may serve as an appeal to all Christians to take a decisive step forward toward unity around a common date for Easter.” Pope Francis added, “The Catholic Church is open to accepting the date that everyone wants: a date of unity.”
He went on to call 2025 a year of grace and “an opportunity for all Christians who recite the same Creed and believe in the same God.”
