Bartholomew I Hopes For Communion with Rome

Patriarch Bartholomew’s Call for Communion with Rome: History, Unity, and the Unfinished Schism

On September 4, 2026, in Budapest, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople spoke to the 27th International Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches. The theme was the Bishop of Rome. His words were not vague goodwill. They were a public hope for restored Eucharistic communion.

“We hope, by the grace and help from on high, for the restoration of full communion with the Church of Rome within the one Body of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” he said. He added that the sorrow of separation “is inseparable from hope,” and that with communion restored “the Pentarchy may once again be complete” and the “five-stringed lyre” of the universal Church may again sound “in the fullness of its ancient harmony.”

He linked that hope to the first-millennium order of five patriarchal sees: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Their communion, he said, was “the most visible sign of the unity of the universal Church.” In the same address he invited the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem to a synaxis, while still naming the missing fifth string: Elder Rome.

This was not a one-off. In November 2025, welcoming Pope Leo XIV to the Phanar, Bartholomew declared that “Christian unity is not a luxury. It is the ultimate prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘that they all may be one’ (Jn. 17:21) and also the essential condition for the mission of the Church.” He prayed that the filioque and papal infallibility, then under study by the Joint International Commission, “will be resolved such that their understanding no longer serve as stumbling blocks.”

In May 2026, at a Catholic Mass in Istanbul marking the anniversary of Leo XIV’s election, he called the path that began with Paul VI and Athenagoras in 1964 “irreversible.” Earlier joint declarations with Leo XIV repeated the same horizon: “the hoped-for restoration of full communion between our sister Churches.”

These statements matter because they come from the first among Orthodox primates by honor. They also matter because they leave the hard questions standing: what broke communion, what still divides it, and whether unity can be restored without abandoning the faith of the undivided Church.

 How East and West Came Apart

The year 1054 is a convenient label, not a clean surgical cut. For centuries the Church of the first millennium lived as one communion of local churches, with Rome first in honor among the ancient sees. Language, politics, and custom slowly pulled Latin West and Greek East apart.

The West used Latin; the East, Greek. After the Western Empire collapsed, the East lived under a Christian emperor in Constantinople. The West had the papal office with universal jurisdiction as the successor of Peter. The East accepted a primacy of honor—“the one who presides in love,” as Athenagoras later put it to Paul VI—but had issue with a monarchy over other bishops. Liturgical differences accumulated: unleavened bread in the West, leavened in the East; married parish clergy in the East; different fasting customs.

The filioque—the Western addition of “and the Son” to the Creed’s clause on the procession of the Holy Spirit—became a symbol of both theology and authority. Rome eventually adopted it; Constantinople treated the addition as both a doctrinal error and a usurpation of a creed belonging to the whole Church.

In 1053 Patriarch Michael Cerularius closed Latin churches in Constantinople. In 1054 papal legates of Leo IX laid a bull of excommunication on the altar of Hagia Sophia. Cerularius excommunicated the legates in return. The bull named persons, not every Eastern church. Relations did not instantly freeze. Communion lingered in places. What hardened the split was later violence: the sack of Constantinople by Latin crusaders in 1204, the Latin Empire, and the memory of Western occupation of Eastern sees.

Reunion was attempted more than once. Lyons in 1274 and Florence in 1438–1439 produced unions. At Florence, most Greek bishops signed Laetentur Caeli, accepting the filioque as from one principle and one spiration, and a defined papal primacy. Mark of Ephesus refused. When the delegation returned, popular and monastic opposition killed the union. Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453. After that, anti-Latin identity became part of Eastern survival. The anathemas of 1054 were lifted in 1965 by Paul VI and Athenagoras. Dialogue resumed. Full communion did not.

The schism is therefore not only 1054. It is a long unraveling of one visible body into two communions that still share baptism, the first seven councils in large part, apostolic succession as each understands it, and a Eucharistic faith they will not share at the same altar.

 Why Unity Is Not Optional

Christ’s prayer in John 17 is not a slogan. “That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you… so that the world may believe.” Division is a scandal to mission. Paul writes of “one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:4–5). A Church that cannot share the chalice cannot fully preach that oneness.

Bartholomew is right that unity is not a luxury. The first millennium’s pentarchy was not a federation of denominations. It was one Church with multiple patriarchal thrones. When Rome and Constantinople ceased to concelebrate, the visible sign of catholicity cracked. The world still reads that crack.

Unity also matters internally. Autocephalous Orthodox churches have themselves fallen into ruptures—Moscow and Constantinople over Ukraine is only the latest. Without a recognized center of unity that can speak for the whole, synodality becomes a stalemate of national churches. The Catholic claim is that Peter’s successor exists precisely so that “there may be one flock and one shepherd” (Jn. 10:16) in a visible way.

Unity does not mean absorption of rites. Eastern Catholics already prove that Byzantine liturgy, married clergy in the Eastern discipline, and Orthodox spiritual theology can live in communion with Rome. The question is whether the Orthodox will accept the same Petrine ministry the undivided Church recognized in a different key.

 Disputed Doctrines: Where the East Departed from Catholic Teaching

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox agree on the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the Mother of God, the real presence, apostolic succession, and the seven mysteries in substance. The remaining disputes are not small.

Papal primacy and infallibility. Orthodoxy grants Rome a primacy of honor in the first millennium and then denies that this primacy includes universal ordinary jurisdiction or the charism defined at Vatican I: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals, is preserved from error. For Catholics, rejection of that primacy is a rejection of the Church’s visible principle of unity. For many Orthodox, Vatican I is the moment Rome left the conciliar Church.

The filioque. Orthodox theology typically insists that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone as from one cause, and may say “through the Son” of the temporal mission or of manifestation, not of eternal origin as from two sources. Catholic dogma, defined at Lyons and Florence, holds that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one principle and one spiration. Photius called the Latin doctrine a heresy. Later Orthodox synods repeated the charge. Catholics reply that the charge misreads both the Latin Fathers and the meaning of “one principle.”

Other developments. Orthodox polemic often lists purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, and papal infallibility as Latin innovations. Catholics answer that these are developments of the same apostolic deposit, not contradictions of it. The Orthodox rejection of Florence after signing it is, on the Catholic reading, not fidelity but a failure of reception under political and popular pressure.

To call every Orthodox distinctive a “heresy” oversimplifies a communion that still confesses Nicaea and Chalcedon. But on the points that actually break the chalice—the Pope’s role and the eternal procession of the Spirit—the Catholic Church has judged the Orthodox position incomplete or erroneous. That is why Bartholomew can hope for communion and still name infallibility and the filioque as stumbling blocks.

 Growth, Stagnation, and the Limits of a National Church

Eastern Orthodoxy is not disappearing. After communism, Russia, Romania, Georgia, and Serbia saw institutional revival. In the United States, some parishes report convert surges, especially among young men. That local energy is real.

The global picture is different. Pew Research found that Orthodox Christians numbered about 260 million in the mid-2010s, more than double the 1910 figure—yet they fell from about 20 percent of all Christians to about 12 percent, and from about 7 percent of world population to about 4 percent. Catholics and Protestants grew far faster, especially outside Europe. About 77 percent of Orthodox still live in Europe, where fertility is low and secularization is advanced. In Russia, weekly attendance among the identified Orthodox has been a small minority. Identification is not the same as practice.

A church tied to ethnicity and empire evangelizes unevenly. The Catholic Church, for all its crises in the West, remains a world church with a single visible head, a missionary history on every continent, and Eastern rites already in communion. Orthodoxy’s strength is depth of liturgy and monastic memory. Its weakness is fragmentation and a limited missionary map. Reunion would not automatically fill pews. It would remove a thousand-year alibi for treating the other half of the ancient Church as a foreign body.

 Scripture and the Papacy

The Catholic case does not begin in 1870. It begins in the Gospel.

Matthew 16:18–19: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” The name change, the rock, the keys, and the binding and loosing are given to Simon uniquely in this scene. Isaiah 22 stands behind the keys: the steward of the house receives authority that another will inherit.

Luke 22:31–32: “Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you (plural) like wheat, but I have prayed for you (singular) that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” The prayer is for Peter’s faith for the sake of the others.

John 21:15–17: three times, “Feed my lambs… tend my sheep… feed my sheep.” The whole flock is committed to Peter after the resurrection.

Acts shows Peter speaking first, receiving the vision that opens the Gentiles, and rendering the decisive word at Jerusalem in a way the narrative highlights. None of this makes the other apostles non-apostles. It does make Peter the visible principle of unity among them.

Orthodox replies often say the rock is Peter’s confession, or Christ, or all the bishops. Those readings appear in some Fathers. They do not erase the other reading, which is also patristic: Peter himself is the rock, and his chair continues.

 The Fathers and the Chair of Peter

Irenaeus of Lyons, writing about 180, pointed to Rome as the church “founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.” “With that church, because of its superior origin, all the churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world.” He lists the succession from the apostles to the bishop of his day. That is not honorary tourism. It is a rule of faith against heresy.

Cyprian of Carthage taught that the Lord “founded a single chair” and “a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair.” “If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he should desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?” Cyprian quarreled with Rome in practice. His theology still named Peter’s chair as the source of sacerdotal unity.

Augustine: Peter “almost everywhere deserved to represent the whole Church,” and therefore received the keys. He also numbered the succession “from Peter himself.” Optatus and others treated the cathedra Petri as the visible mark against schism.

Leo the Great, a Western pope whose Tome was received at Chalcedon with the cry that Peter had spoken through Leo, wrote that Christ “placed the principal charge on the blessed Peter” and “from him as from the head wishes his gifts to flow to all the body,” so that whoever secedes from Peter’s rock “has no part or lot in the divine mystery.” Chalcedon did not treat Leo as a mere honorary president.

The first-millennium East appealed to Rome in crisis more often than later controversy admits: Athanasius, Chrysostom’s allies, and the Formula of Hormisdas after the Acacian schism, which Eastern bishops signed, confessing the apostolic see as the norm of faith. Honorary primacy that never judges, never receives appeals, and never defines is not the primacy the sources describe.

Vatican I’s language is later and more juridical. The seed is earlier. Development is not invention if the later definition unfolds what the earlier Church already practiced when unity was at stake.

 The Filioque: Scripture, Fathers, and Florence

John 15:26 says the Spirit “proceeds from the Father” and is sent by the Son. Orthodox theology treats ekporeusis as belonging to the Father alone. Catholic theology distinguishes the Father as principal source from the Son’s sharing in the one spiration. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:9). Christ breathes the Spirit on the apostles (Jn. 20:22). What is revealed in the economy is not alien to the eternal life of God.

Western and some Eastern Fathers speak of the Spirit as from the Father through the Son, or from both. Tertullian: the Spirit proceeds “from the Father through the Son.” Augustine developed the theology of the Spirit as the communion of Father and Son. The Athanasian Creed, long used in the West, says the Spirit is “from the Father and the Son… proceeding.” Maximus the Confessor defended the Latin usage as not positing two causes. Florence later defined: the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son “as from one principle and through one spiration.”

The Orthodox canonical objection is that Ephesus forbade another creed. Yet Constantinople I had already expanded Nicaea’s third article. If expansion by a later council is licit, the issue becomes whether the Latin Church could clarify the Creed in its own tongue against Arian remnants, and whether Florence, with Eastern signatures, could recognize that clarification. The subsequent Orthodox rejection of Florence does not erase that the assembled Eastern hierarchy, under the emperor, accepted the doctrine once the “one principle” formula was clear.

Photius’s Mystagogy made the filioque a banner of Eastern independence. That banner still flies. Dialogue has narrowed misunderstandings: Catholics do not teach two sources in the Trinity; many Orthodox accept “through the Son.” The remaining gap is whether “and the Son” may name the Son’s role in the Spirit’s eternal origin. Catholic dogma says yes. Until that is resolved in one confession, the Creed itself remains a wall at the liturgy.

 What Bartholomew’s Hope Requires

Bartholomew wants the pentarchy whole. He wants the common chalice. He also wants Rome to demand no more than first-millennium primacy and to treat infallibility and the filioque as problems to be “resolved” so they cease to block communion. That is a real invitation and a real condition.

From the Catholic side, first-millennium primacy was already more than a seating chart. Peter’s successor confirmed councils, received appeals, and was treated as the touchstone of communion. Florence was an attempt to say that in a joint definition. The Orthodox refusal after Florence is the historical fact that still governs the altar.

Unity will not be a press release. It will be a shared confession that the Church Christ built on Peter still has a visible rock, that the Spirit proceeds as the Church of East and West together can say without mutilating either the monarchy of the Father or the Son’s consubstantial sharing in the Spirit’s going forth, and that national autocephaly is not the last word about catholicity.

Bartholomew has named the wound and the hope. The Fathers named the chair. Scripture named the keys. The world still waits to see whether the five-stringed lyre can play in one key—or whether honor without jurisdiction and a Creed without the Son in the Spirit’s procession will remain the price of a separate communion. The prayer of John 17 does not bless that price. It judges it.