Interview
There is a serious and big engagement of Christian leaders to find a common date for the celebration of Easter. What are the biggest obstacles?
Pillay: It is with gratitude and great joy that we have heard the voices of church leaders and theologians calling for a common Easter date as a sign of Christian unity. Recently, Pope Francis at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, at the conclusion of the 58th Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, appealed to all Christians to take a decisive step forward toward unity around a common date for Easter. His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has called for vibrant discussions on the common date of Easter. Their important statements on this pressing question were also appreciated by other church leaders and theologians. The statements have attracted worldwide attention because they exactly express this vision of Christian unity that lies at the heart of our mission as World Council of Churches, the vision “that all may be one” in the resurrected Christ (John 17:21).
The challenges and difficulties on our way towards a common date of Easter can be identified on at least two levels. Firstly, from the earliest days of the church onwards, there have been different ways and traditions of calculating the date of Easter, the various “Easter computations,” and later on, since the calendar reform introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, there have been two different calendars, the Julian and the Gregorian calendar, leading to the result, that the Eastern and the Western date of Easter only rarely coincide.
Secondly, but not less importantly, the concerns that are particularly but not exclusively raised among our Orthodox brothers and sisters must be taken very seriously: It must be ensured that the path to unity does not lead to new divisions. The voices highlighting the complexity of the processes of deciding on a common date should therefore not be misunderstood as neglecting our common vision, but on the contrary, they need to be heard as a sincere concern that the process that leads us to a common date really does include all churches and respect their traditions and ways of discernment in this question. For this reason, the discussion on the common Easter date is not simply a technical problem of calculating and imposing a correct date, but it touches many ecclesial and also pastoral dimensions.
In case of an agreement, can the Orthodox Church of Moscow be involved?
Pillay: A solution that would lead to the exclusion of one church should not satisfy us. Such an outcome would mean the exact opposite of what we want to achieve and of what our vision is about – the World Council of Churches longs for unity, not for division. Our vision of the church is inclusive. To show to the world “that all are one” and to give the world a sign of unity is precisely done by not excluding. Therefore, all churches should be involved in the discussion of this important matter and all churches must be part of the necessary processes of reaching an agreement.
It's difficult for people to understand why Christians are divided for Easter, the most important celebration of the Christian faith. Which sign and meaning can be the common date for the world today?
Pillay: This year, 2025, will be one of the few years when Christians of all traditions will celebrate Easter on the same date – 20 April. This occasion should renew the search for a common Easter date as a sign of our unity in faith. A common Easter date shows that Christians celebrate their festivals together and not against each other. As this year also marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea of 325 CE, the first ecumenical council gathering the whole of Christendom, which already addressed the need for a common celebration of Easter since churches of that time often used different dates and methods of calculation. There is more than one reason for us to approach the question of a common date for Easter again and to explore how a shared celebration of Easter can unite Christians worldwide in their common faith in the resurrected Christ.
It is also worth remembering that this vision of a common date for Easter has long been an important question for the WCC. In March 1997, a joint consultation of the World Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches met in Aleppo, Syria and issued the statement "Towards a Common Date for Easter." In this statement, the churches from the Middle East highlight how important they thought it was for minority churches in a non-Christian environment to celebrate Easter on a common date. Other churches highlighted that we should also take into account the contemporary situation, which calls for a common witness to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the central mystery of the Christian faith. The Aleppo statement thus led to an intense discussion. One of our contributions to pursue our vision of unity further and to advance the discussions this year among other initiatives will be a webinar organized by the WCC Faith and Order Commission, in which Oriental, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant theologians will discuss the question of the common Easter date. Furthermore, we anticipate that this issue will be explored in greater depth at the Sixth World Conference on Faith and Order, which will take place in October this year in Egypt under the theme “Where Now for Visible Unity?” By addressing this core question of the ecumenical movement, we seek to advance the pursuit of the common date of Easter as a crucial and visible sign of Christian unity. We hope that the year of the anniversary of Nicaea will help create a momentum so that in the future all Christians can celebrate Easter together.
Webinar - Easter 2025: Celebrating together to strengthen unity
