The journey towards Christian unity

This Sunday (7 December 2025) is the 60^th anniversary of the day on which the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate lifted the mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054AD. On Tuesday 7 December 1965, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I in Istanbul and Pope Paul VI in Rome simultaneously issued a joint statement affirming their willingness to remove the longstanding anathemas that had for centuries alienated the two Churches, so that they would no longer hinder the journey towards reconciliation.

In the final paragraph of the joint statement of December 1965, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I and Pope Paul VI stated, ‘They hope, nevertheless, that this act will be pleasing to God, who is prompt to pardon us when we pardon each other. They hope that the whole Christian world, especially the entire Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church will appreciate this gesture as an expression of a sincere desire shared in common for reconciliation, and as an invitation to follow out in a spirit of trust, esteem and mutual charity the dialogue which, with Gods help, will lead to living together again, for the greater good of souls and the coming of the kingdom of God, in that full communion of faith, fraternal accord and sacramental life which existed among them during the first thousand years of the life of the Church.’ Read the full text of the statement HERE.

By the 11th Century, Western and Eastern Churches had become divided by a mixture of doctrine, church practice, politics and culture, culminating in Pope Leo IX’s excommunication of Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople on 16 July 1054. Patriach Michael had responded with his own excommunication of the Bishop of Rome. Once each had declared that the other Church was heretical, the communion between Eastern and Western Churches was officially severed. The split created the distinction between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches that remains to this day.

60 years after the joint declarations, the journey to a fuller outworking of the unity of the Church continues. Today leaders of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Churches in the West Midlands relate in friendship and respect. The goal remains that, in the words of the prayer of Jesus, that his followers ‘may be one’ (John 17:20-23). 

Photo of Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Salvation Army and United Reformed Church leaders at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Dormition of Theotokos and Saint Andrew, Birmingham, 30 July 2025