Pope Leo XIV called for renewed commitment to ecumenism among Christian denominations on Sunday, urging all Christians and their leaders to deepen their communion in the commonly confessed tenets of the faith.
In an apostolic letter released ahead of a papal trip to Nicea — during which Leo will join the Patriarch of Constantinople to mark the 1700th anniversary of the ecumenical council which produced the eponymous creed — Leo recalled the bitterly divisive doctrinal disputes which preceded and followed the formulation of the Nicene Creed.
The pope stressed that, after generations of division and heresy over the essential nature of the Trinity, much of global Christianity today is united in confessing God’s essential nature.
“We must therefore leave behind theological controversies that have lost their raison d’être in order to develop a common understanding and even more, a common prayer to the Holy Spirit, so that he may gather us all together in one faith and one love,” said the pope.
Of course, ecumenism has been a treasured priority of all the popes, and since the Second Vatican Council especially. And, as Leo observed in his letter, titled In Unitate Fidei, “truly, what unites us is much greater than what divides us.”
Leo observed that “in a world that is divided and torn apart by many conflicts, the one universal Christian community can be a sign of peace and an instrument of reconciliation, playing a decisive role in the global commitment to peace.”
But while that will ring true at an emotional and spiritual level for many Christians of different denominations, the current state of ecumenical affairs presents a complicated picture.
While the current points of division are not Trinitarian, some are arguably rooted in disputes about other articles of the creed, and the nature of the sacraments. And still others, while not necessarily intractable, may appear to be practically so — at least for the time being.
So, how much closer Leo’s vision of unity can the Eastern and Western Churches get in the coming years?
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The highlight of Leo’s visit to Nicea is, of course, the much-heralded joint commemoration of the Nicene Council and its creed with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the primus inter pares and generally recognized global leader of the Orthodox Churches.
Bartholomew I has, over the last two decades and more, participated in numerous gestures of rapprochement with the Catholic Church, working closely and well with several popes.
In 2020, Pope Francis sent the patriarch a fraternal message on the feast of St. Andrew expressed his desire for full and formal communion between Catholics and Orthodox Christians. “Although obstacles remain, I am confident that by walking together in mutual love and pursuing theological dialogue, we will reach that goal,” said Francis.
Asked in an interview with The Pillar about how realistic this goal appeared to him, Bartholomew said that “dialogue and reconciliation are not optional for us; they are directives and commandments.”
Since then, the papal-patriarchal gift exchanges and fraternal visits have continued, and expressions of mutual esteem have become regular. And these ongoing gestures have been accompanied by occasionally significant, even if widely under-appreciated, developments.
In 2023, a joint commission of Catholic and Orthodox theologians reached agreement on the first new joint document in years, specifically addressing synodality and primacy in the modern era.
While acknowledging “major issues [which] complicate an authentic understanding of synodality and primacy in the Church,” the document also concluded that “the interdependence of synodality and primacy is a fundamental principle in the life of the Church.”
Further fruit of the discourse was seen last year, when Pope Francis revived use of the papal title Patriarch of the West, bringing back the style which has fallen in and out of usage over the centuries and was most recently dropped by Benedict XVI in 2006.
Benedict had ceased using the title in the first place in the hopes of benefiting ecumenical dialogue, seeking to underline that the See of Rome was not, of its nature, exclusively Westward-facing nor did it favor a universally Latin conception of the Church. Ironically, the move had the opposite effect, as it was interpreted among some Orthodox leaders as a kind of unilateral assertion of universal papal authority.
Francis’ readoption of the title was, at least in some quarters, quietly greeted as a sign of “synodality” — understood in the Eastern rather than modern Roman usage.
But even amid much — potentially even historic — progress, the ecumenical landscape between East and West remains deeply complicated, and has been made much more so by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the Eastern Churches, has long asserted its own claims to primacy within the global Orthodox Communion while at the same time committing itself to explicit theological support for the regime of President Vladimir Putin.
In a bitter irony, it has linked its support for Putin and his war — which Church leaders have called a holy war — to its ecclesiastical claims for primacy and cast both in terms of the imperial support for and quasi headship of the Church exercised by the Emperor Constantine at Nicea.
The attempts by the Russian Church to assert ecclesiastical sovereignty over Orthodox Ukrainians, alongside Moscow’s bid to subjugate the Ukrainian state, led to many of the world’s Orthodox Churches, led by Bartholemew and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, to recognize the autocephalous nature of the Ukrainian Church, which itself triggered anathemas and declaration of schism by the Moscow Patriarchate.
Last year, in a second interview with The Pillar, Bartholomew declared that “the Russian invasion into a sovereign country in no way can be called a “holy war,” but it actually is a ‘diabolic’ one!”
Looking ahead to the 1700th anniversary of Nicea and the joint commemoration with the pope — then expected to be Francis, but now Leo — the patriarch repeated that he is “fully committed to healing the divisions between our Churches.”
“We intensely pray for the healing of the 1054 schism between Rome and Constantinople,” the patriarch said.
But the more acute ecumenical tension now may be that created by Moscow and its supporter Churches declaring schisms within the Orthodox communion.
On the one hand, it has meant the self-removal of some of the most truculent opponents to closer communion between East and West from Catholic Orthodox dialogue, opening new avenues for real progress. But, on the other hand, it has raised the spectre that closer ties between Rome and Constantinople could widen the breaches within Orthodoxy itself.
In an apparent nod to the inter-Orthodox tensions, Bartholomew told The Pillar that across a range of Catholic-Orthodox cooperation, any agreements “in no way should create more tension among our Churches and especially among the various local Orthodox Churches.”
According to the text of his letter released on Sunday, Pope Leo appears to be striking a tone of enthusiasm and flexibility.
Looking ahead to his trip to Nicea, he said “we must walk together to reach unity and reconciliation among all Christians. The Nicene Creed can be the basis and reference point for this journey. It offers us a model of true unity in legitimate diversity.”
Quite where the lines of “legitimate diversity” can be drawn is, obviously, something which it will prove difficult to agree upon. Ironically, it might prove to be the Orthodox who cannot agree upon it among themselves.
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