21/05/2014
The Pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land marks the 50th anniversary of a crucial step towards Catholic-Orthodox unity.
An historic meeting took place in Jerusalem in 1964 between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople that lead to a significant improvement in relations between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The successors of those two men, indeed of the Apostles Peter and Andrew, Pope Francis and Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, will echo the 1964 meeting by coming together in the Holy Land on 25 and 26 May.
In 2013, Patriarch Bartholomew I attended Pope Francis’s inaugural Mass – the first time such an event had occurred since the Great Schism, or split, of 1054.
So for today’s Catholic News podcast, we’re talking about Christian Unity with studio guest Fr Mark Woodruff. Fr Mark’s a Westminster priest who’s also vice chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom – a society working and praying for the unity of the Churches of East and West.
To download and see more of the Bishops’ Conference Middle East Watch, visit here: Christian Unity / Catholic News / Podcasts / Home / Catholic News – The Catholic Church for England and Wales