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risu.ua - 08.12.2025 - According to the Orthodoxtimes, in his address, the Ecumenical Patriarch mentioned Pope Leo XIV's recent official visit to Phanar and their joint pilgrimage to Nicaea, marking the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of 325. He continued: "In the same spirit, we gather again today to honor and celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the mutual lifting of the 1054 anathemas by the late Pope Paul VI and the late Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on 7 December 1965. In a period of increasing polarization throughout the world — including within the Christian oikoumene — this prophetic step toward unity deserves particular attention. In their Common Declaration, they extended a decisive and sincere invitation to a new way of relating between our Sister Churches—not through ‘offensive words, unfounded accusations, and condemnable gestures,’ but through ‘the purification of hearts, the rejection of historical wrongs, and the determined will to reach a common understanding of and expression of the apostolic faith.” Patriarch Bartholomew stressed that the lifting of the anathemas was a tangible sign of a new beginning and provided crucial momentum for the dialogue of love, later joined by the necessary dialogue of truth through the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue. Patriarch Bartholomew condemned any manifestations of indifference toward the pursuit of unity. “We must not abandon the goal of unity... Let us instead cultivate respect, honor, and above all mutual love, so that every encounter may become an exchange of spiritual gifts and a step toward unity,” emphasized the Ecumenical Patriarch. He also recalled that on the 10th anniversary of the lifting of the anathemas, on 7 December 1975, Pope Paul VI made an unexpected gesture of profound symbolic significance: he knelt and kissed the feet of the head of the Patriarchal delegation to the Vatican, the late Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon. Deeply moved, the Metropolitan later remarked that “only a great man — or a saint — could make such a gesture.” Patriarch Bartholomew once again called for steadfast commitment to dialogue, reconciliation, and the journey toward the restoration of full Christian unity.