Catholic Church will accept a common date for Easter in both the West and the East

 

Catholics will accept a common date for Easter in East, West, pope says

Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

Pope Francis gives his homily during an ecumenical evening prayer service marking the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity Jan. 25, 2025, at Rome's Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. (CNS/Vatican Media)

Rome — January 27, 2025

Celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Pope Francis reaffirmed the Catholic Church's willingness to accept a proposal for a common date for celebrating Easter in the West and the East.

Noting that in 2025 the date coincides on the West's Gregorian calendar and the East's Julian calendar, Francis said that "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."

"The Catholic Church is open to accepting the date that everyone wants: a date of unity," he said Jan. 25 during an ecumenical evening prayer service at Rome's Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

The service marked the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which focused on this year's celebration of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which gave Christians a common Creed and a formula for determining a common date for the celebration of Easter.

Before the Council of Nicaea in 325, different Christian communities celebrated Easter on different dates; the council decided that for the unity of the Christian community and its witness, Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

But the Julian calendar, which is what Christians used in the fourth century, was increasingly out of sync with the actual solar year, so March 21 — generally assumed to be the date of the Northern Hemisphere's spring equinox — gradually "drifted" away from the actual equinox.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar, dropping 10 days and making the equinox fall on March 21 again. Most Eastern Christians did not adopt the new calendar, leading to a situation where Easter occasionally is on the same day, but Eastern Christians' celebration can be as much as four weeks later.

Francis has reaffirmed on several occasions the position officially taken by St. Paul VI in the 1960s that if Eastern Christians agree on a way to determine a common date for Easter, the Catholic Church would accept it.

The ecumenical prayer service began with Francis praying before the tomb of St. Paul. He was joined by Orthodox Metropolitan Polykarpos of Italy and Malta and by Anglican Archbishop Ian Ernest, director of the Anglican Center in Rome. The Orthodox and Anglican bishops also joined the pope at the end of the liturgy in giving their blessing to the crowd.

The theme of the 2025 week of prayer was Jesus' question to Martha of Bethany: "Do you believe this?"

In the Gospel of John, Martha tells Jesus that if he had been there, her brother Lazarus would not have died. Jesus tells Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live," and then he asks if she believes. Martha responds with a declaration of faith: "Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world."

Francis said, "This tender encounter between Jesus and Martha from the Gospel teaches us that even in times of desolation, we are not alone, and we can continue to hope. Jesus gives life even when it seems that all hope has vanished."

"Hope can falter following difficult experiences such as a painful loss, an illness, a bitter disappointment or a sudden betrayal," the pope said. "Although each of us may experience moments of despair or know people who have lost hope, the Gospel tells us that Jesus always restores hope because he raises us up from the ashes of death."

Sometimes, the pope said, people may feel like the search for Christian unity has reached a dead end or that ecumenical dialogue is "doomed to failure."

"All of this makes us experience the same anguish as Martha, but the Lord comes to us," he said. "Do we believe this? Do we believe that he is the resurrection and the life? That he rewards our efforts and always gives us the grace to continue our journey together? Do we believe this?"

The anniversary of the Council of Nicaea is "a year of grace, an opportunity for all Christians who recite the same Creed and believe in the same God," the pope said. "Let us rediscover the common roots of the faith; let us preserve unity! Let us always move forward! May the unity we all are searching for be found."

What does "biritual" Priest really mean?

Biritual priests seen as

witnesses to the Catholic Church’s

‘great unity’ in liturgical diversity

Syro-Malabar Bishop Joy Alappatt raises the chalice as he concelebrates Holy Qurbana with Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, far left, July 20, 2024, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis during the National Eucharistic Congress. Holy Qurbana is the name for Mass in the Catholic Church's Syro-Malabar rite. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)

(OSV News) — “Many Catholics don’t necessarily know about the great unity in diversity that the Catholic Church is an expression of,” Father Eugene Ritz, the chancellor of the Latin Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania, told OSV News.

In fact, the Catholic Church is made up of two dozen “Catholic churches,” each belonging to seven ritual families — Alexandrian, Armenian, Byzantine, Chaldean, Latin, Maronite and Syriac — and each church in that ritual family having its own distinctive traditions and liturgical variations.

Father Ritz serves as the co-postulator for the canonization cause of Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek (1904-1984), an American priest of the Latin Catholic Church, who was ordained in the Byzantine rite of the Russian Greek Catholic Church and had biritual faculties to celebrate the Divine Liturgy (called the Mass in the Latin Church) as a missionary to the Soviet Union from 1939-1963.

The Latin Catholic Church, the Russian Greek Catholic Church and 22 other Eastern Catholic churches — each self-governing with their own hierarchy, liturgical rites and traditions while being in communion with each other through Pope Francis, who heads the Latin Church as bishop of Rome — all make up the global Catholic Church. Thanks to their shared communion, Catholics in each of these different churches can all share in the Eucharist together — a unity on display July 20 at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis where more than 25,000 Catholics joined in the Holy Qurbana, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church’s form of celebrating the Eucharist, and received holy Communion.

Many Catholic priests — just like the late Father Ciszek — also have biritual faculties, allowing them to celebrate the liturgies proper to a different ritual church within the Catholic communion than the one they are part of. These priests act as witnesses to the “unity in legitimate diversity” that St. John Paul II discussed in his 1995 papal encyclical “Ut Unum Sint.”

According to Father Ritz, Father Ciszek’s formation and ministry were strongly influenced by the “deep patrimony” of the Eastern Catholic churches. The son of Polish immigrants, Father Ciszek grew up in Pennsylvania, where Catholics worship in the Latin Church’s Roman rite the future missionary grew up in, as well as the Byzantine rite shared by several Eastern Catholic churches. After joining the Jesuits in 1928, he responded to Pope Pius XI’s call for missionary priests to minister in Russia and learned the Byzantine rite of the Russian Greek Catholic Church.

“His very willingness in the discernment of his vocation to be ordained in service to one of the other Catholic churches so that he could undertake what could be considered dangerous missionary work beautifully expresses the universality of Catholicism,” Father Ritz said.

While serving a sentence in a Siberian gulag, Father Ciszek celebrated the Divine Liturgy in secret in the forest with other Catholics until 1963 when the U.S. government secured his release back to the U.S.

Father Henry Finch encourages priests who are considering a request for biritual faculties to avoid “treating another spiritual tradition, liturgical tradition as a museum piece,” he told OSV News. “It’s something that needs to be embraced in a way that it becomes a part of the priest’s own spirituality.”

A Latin Catholic who came into full communion to the Catholic Church from evangelical Baptist Christianity, Father Finch first encountered the Byzantine tradition of Catholicism by visiting St. Basil the Great Byzantine Catholic Parish in Irving, Texas, while attending nearby Holy Trinity Seminary.

Several years later, while serving at St. Peter’s Catholic Student Center for Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the local community of Byzantine Catholics connected with Father Finch, who concelebrated the Divine Liturgy with their pastor, Father Elias Rafaj, whenever he could.

After receiving biritual faculties, Father Finch celebrated his first Divine Liturgy May 12, 2024. That day, the Gospel reading included John 17:21: “That they may all be one,” the verse that inspired St. John Paul II’s encyclical “Ut Unum Sint.”

“I thought it was fitting,” Father Finch said.

Father Peter Davids also learned to celebrate the Divine Liturgy from Father Rafaj. “Actually,” he told OSV News, “every liturgy I’ve learned, I have learned by watching others” and reading the liturgical books. In addition to the Divine Liturgy, Father Davids can celebrate the ordinary Roman Mass and Divine Worship, a form of the Mass in traditional English for the Latin Church’s personal ordinariates for the Anglican tradition.

Father Davids grew up and married in the Plymouth Brethren Church; eventually he joined the Anglican Communion and became a priest for the Episcopal Church.

Through ecumenical connections, Father Davids and his wife encountered Catholicism. While living in Houston, they were received into the Catholic Church. Soon after, Father Davids was ordained a deacon and then a priest for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, one of three personal ordinariates for the Anglican tradition established under Pope Benedict XVI.

While visiting a nearby Byzantine Catholic parish, St. John Chrysostom, Father Davids was invited to concelebrate the Divine Liturgy. Surprised at the invitation, Father Davids agreed.

“‘Here’s the book,'” Father Davids recounted Father Rafaj, the community’s pastor at the time, telling him. “‘Follow along and I’ll gesture to you what to do.'”

Soon after, Father Rafaj asked if Father Davids would like biritual faculties to celebrate the Divine Liturgy on his own. In response to Father Davids’ “Yes,” Father Rafaj sought permission on his behalf from the Byzantine Catholic metropolitan archbishop of Pittsburgh.

A few months later, Father Davids began celebrating the Divine Liturgy at St. John Chrysostom.

Since then, Father Davids has retired and moved with his wife in 2019 to Georgetown, Texas, to serve as chaplain to the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist there.

For now, Father Davids still celebrates the “typical Roman Mass” for the Dominicans — something an ordinariate priest has faculties to do — and is a regular supply priest as needed for Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, a recently established community of Catholics who celebrate the ordinariate’s Divine Worship Mass in west Austin, much closer to Georgetown.

Not all biritual priests come from Western traditions. Father Dennis Smith was raised Greek Orthodox in Fort Worth, Texas, before coming into full communion with the Catholic Church as a young adult.

Feeling called to the priesthood, he studied at Holy Trinity Seminary. However — he eventually discovered a major snag: he was Catholic, just not canonically part of the Latin Church.

“Shortly before I was to be ordained to the diaconate, I was called into the rector’s office and informed that I could not be ordained,” he wrote to OSV News via email.

Why?

“Because I was not Roman Catholic,” he said, using a common term for Catholics in the Latin Church. “According to canon law (at that time, and I believe even to this day) when one converts from Orthodoxy to the Catholic Church, they are automatically a Greek Catholic (nowadays more often referred to as a Byzantine or Eastern rite Catholic) rather than a Roman Catholic.”

That was the first time Father Smith had heard of the Eastern Catholic churches.

After receiving a dispensation to be ordained in the Latin Church’s Roman rite, Father Smith served the Latin Diocese of Fort Worth. Eventually, he learned about the local St. Basil the Great Byzantine Catholic Parish, contacted their priest and requested biritual faculties.

For years, until health challenges became too much, Father Smith served at St. Basil’s as a substitute and interim priest — and as a bridge between local Catholics of different ritual churches.

“During my times at St. Basil’s,” he said, “many parishioners from my Roman parish came to worship and witness the majestic beauty of the Divine Liturgy.”

Kiki Hayden writes for OSV News from Texas. Peter Jesserer Smith, national news and features editor for OSV News, contributed to this report.