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There is a fairly high-power (ecumenical) conference for the 1700th anniversary of the AD 325 Council of Nicaea going on in Rome, at the Angelicum, as I write this. Only the Plenary talks in the Aula Magna are recorded and live-streamed. The calendar sessions are on Saturday. YouTube: NICAEA and the Church of the Third Millennium - Friday, June 6: Nicaea and Synodality [ youtube.com] NICAEA and the Church of the Third Millennium - Thursday, June 5: The Nicene Faith [ youtube.com] NICAEA and the Church of the Third Millennium - Wednesday, June 4: Opening Day [ youtube.com] Met. JOB, whose editorial was the impetus for this thread, spoke on the Opening Day. @1:26 17:15-17:45 Aula Magna “Towards Unity in Faith: Nicaea and the Question of Restoring Ecclesial Unity Today” Metropolitan Job (Getcha) of Pisidia (Ecumenical Patriarchate) Nicaea 2025 Conference Program [ iota-web.org] Session 9 | 12:00-13:30 Session 9: Towards a Common Date of Easter Chair: Rev. Prof. Joseph Carola, S.J. (Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy) Session sponsored by the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences Saturday, June 7 12:00-13:30 Aula Magna Prof. Gayle E. Woloschak (IOTA Vice-President and Treasurer, Associate Dean for Graduate Student and Post-Doctoral Affairs, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA): “Nicaea and the Ongoing Controversy Over the Date of Easter” Rev. Prof. Carlo Dell’Osso (Patristic Institute “Augustinianum” and the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, Rome, Italy): “African Computists: Around the Pseudo-Cyprian De Pascha Computus” Prof. Paul Mattei (Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences): “Nicaea: Mathematical Rules and Historical-Theological Questions” Session 10 (Breakout) | 14:30-16:00 Session 10A: Date of Easter Chair: Rev. Prof. Rocco Ronzani, O.S.A. (Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archive, Vatican) Session sponsored by the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences Saturday, June 7 14:30-16:00 Rev. Prof. Francesco Braschi (Venerable Ambrosian Library, Milan, Italy): “Ambrose, Lettera extra collectionem 13 (Maurists 23)” Aula 2 Prof. Alberto Camplani (Sapienza University, Rome, Italy): “Leo the Great and the Alexandrian Computus (Ep. 121 to the Emperor Marcian; Ep. 122 to Julian, Bishop of Cos)” S.E.R. Mons. Carlos Azevedo (Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences): “Late Computists, Including Martin of Braga, De Pascha” Session 11 (Breakout) | 16:30-18:00 Session 11A: The Significance of a Common Easter Celebration for Christian Unity Chair: Prof. Dr. Gayle E. Woloschak (IOTA Vice-President and Treasurer, Associate Dean for Graduate Student and Post-Doctoral Affairs, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA) Session sponsored by Pro Oriente Saturday, June 7 16:30-18:00 Aula 2 Dr. Christian Gastgeber (Dozent, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria): “Calculating the Easter Date: Differences, Frictions, and Solutions in Medieval Christianity” Dr. Aho Shemunkasho (Director of the MA Program in Syriac Theology, University of Salzburg, Austria): “The Challenges of the Different Easter Dates and the Urgent Need for a Common Date: The Current Situation for Syriac Christians in Ecumenical Contexts” Dr. Aleksandr Andreev (Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Oslo, Norway): “From Nicaea to Milanković and Beyond: Practical and Liturgical Considerations for an Astronomical Determination of Easter” Also, recently added: Papal Audience | 8:30-11:00 Saturday, June 7 8:30-11:00 Private Audience with His Holiness Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. The event is open to registered conference attendees only.
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Christ is in our midst!!
ajk,
Thank you for both your interest in this important issue and for bringing us the most ukp-to-date news about its progress.
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Thank you for both your interest in this important issue and for bringing us the most up-to-date news about its progress. You are welcome and I appreciate your kind words. I recently commented elsewhere [ groups.io]: Unfortunately, I see a whole lot of talking about the Easter issue, but no real discussion about resolving it. There's a somewhat apocryphal saying usually attribute to Mark Twain (but probably from his buddy Charles Dudley Warner), Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it and so ( mutatis mutandis) for the "calendar" and a common Easter. In assessing the issue from the Orthodox position in the latest WCC publication, Towards a Common Date for Easter [ oikoumene.org], Metropolitan Prof. Dr Job (Getcha), Permanent Representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches, concludes "And thus, unfortunately, the question of the calendar was postponed ad calendas graecas, and this is where we stand today." Thus, the epitaph of the Common Easter : "Postponed ad calendas graecas." Nevertheless, there is Remarks by H.A.H. Ec. Pat. Bartholomew on April 24, 2025 - 1700th Anniversary, Council of Nicaea [ youtube.com] @12:20
... most importantly we're hoping for and working together on a possible joint date for the celebration of Easter and from the remarks of Pope Leo given June 7, 2025 at the conference marking the1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea [ osvnews.com]: The Symposium has a third theme related to the date of Easter. As we know, one of the objectives of the Council of Nicaea was to establish a common date for Easter in order to express the unity of the Church throughout the oikoumene. Sadly, differences in their calendars no longer allow Christians to celebrate together the most important feast of the liturgical year, causing pastoral problems within communities, dividing families and weakening the credibility of our witness to the Gospel. Several concrete solutions have been proposed that, while respecting the principle of Nicaea, would allow Christians to celebrate together the “Feast of Feasts”. In this year, when all Christians have celebrated Easter on the same day, I would reaffirm the openness of the Catholic Church to the pursuit of an ecumenical solution favouring a common celebration of the Lord’s resurrection and thus giving greater missionary force to our preaching of “the name of Jesus and the salvation born of faith in the saving truth of the Gospel” (Address to Pontifical Mission Societies, 22 May 2025).
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There is a fairly high-power (ecumenical) conference for the 1700th anniversary of the AD 325 Council of Nicaea going on in Rome, at the Angelicum, as I write this. Only the Plenary talks in the Aula Magna are recorded and live-streamed. The calendar sessions are on Saturday. Will any of the Saturday talks be written up and posted on-line?
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Joined: May 2007
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There is a fairly high-power (ecumenical) conference for the 1700th anniversary of the AD 325 Council of Nicaea going on in Rome, at the Angelicum, as I write this. Only the Plenary talks in the Aula Magna are recorded and live-streamed. The calendar sessions are on Saturday. Will any of the Saturday talks be written up and posted on-line? Saturday's Plenary: NICAEA and the Church of the Third Millennium - Saturday, June 7: Date of Easter [ youtube.com] I have searched for postings of papers by the breakout sessions' authors but have not found any. A conference proceedings is intended but that will take some time.
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ajk, thanks for that link. The first speaker made a number of small mistakes, but he seemed to be advocating the adoption of the Gregorian paschalion. He also seems to agree that using the true moon, instead of using the mean moon, would be overkill. The second speaker's overview of the pseudo-Cyprianic de Pascha Computus was clear and informative. The third speaker understood the historical documents very well. We should thank the non-native speakers of English for their hard work in learning English and in presenting papers in that language.
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ajk, thanks for that link. The first speaker... The second speaker's overview ... The third speaker understood ... We should thank the non-native speakers of English for their hard work in learning English and in presenting papers in that language. I agree and have expressed my admiration for those non-native speakers of English giving presentations in English. The final wrap-up session is NICAEA and the Church of the Third Millennium - Saturday, June 7: Afternoon [ youtube.com] @~5:50 the plenary papers will be edited and we hope to put them out online on the IOTA channel within a year and... we will also...edit and publish online within the next two years or so the papers that were given in the breakout session ... @~13:23 ...about the third day of the conference and the practical questions and in particular regarding the date the of Easter ... @~15:23 ... my name is Aushim Mukashu from Salzburg from the Syrian Orthodox Church ... I think the question, the issue with Easter, is a little bit too short to leave it as is just stated by you -- you mentioned the Easter date. There should be a way to work really strongly together on it not just on academic but somehow on a way that we can give a message from this conference to the hierarchies of the church but also to the faithful, that there should be something comes into dynamic to find a common solution; and we cannot wait till we have full communion on every sense and all other theological question are sorted out -- being the primacy and whatever else -- because this is an issue that affects many people on normal community parish everywhere in the world ... The remark of "Aushim Mukashu" (spelling as given in the transcript) echoes my appraisal: A good conference, good rehashing and interpreting of the history, fervent desire and need of a solution, but no concrete movement forward. Pope Leo, speaking to the Conference participants, said: 'Several concrete solutions have been proposed that, while respecting the principle of Nicaea, would allow Christians to celebrate together the “Feast of Feasts”.' There is Aleppo, but what else?
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More @13:17 from IOTA [ iota-web.org] President and Founder Dr. Paul L. Gavrilyuk (Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy, Theology Department, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA): @13:17 We also wanted to say a few words of course about the third day of the conference and the practical questions, and in particular regarding the date of Easter. It seems fairly obvious that the present Orthodox calculation of the date of Easter is simply inaccurate and it's a big question whether, while on the one hand Easter is an immensely important practical matter, often actually dividing the families for example, nevertheless it's not a question that should remain church dividing and one might hope that it's actually in the church that is eucharistically united that the resolution of that question would become possible. But it certainly would be possible astronomically at least I think again what's lacking is the will; so what's not lacking is the scholarly and scientific resourcefulness with which this question has been addressed in the 21st century and at our conference. He came across to me as someone who can get things done. I hope he succeeds.
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I liked the choir that sang at the end of the session. Dr. Gavrilyuk seems to favor the Aleppo proposal. My preference is for the Gregorian calendar, but if the Orthodox could be brought around to the Aleppo proposal, that would truly be a providential event.
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Dr. Gavrilyuk seems to favor the Aleppo proposal. Other than the Julian and Gregorian Paschalia, does he have any other choice? Are there other proposals that are being considered? Regarding the Julian and Gregorian stalemate, I repeat (see #Post425231) a conclusion from the Proceedings of the Orthodox Congress that is referenced by Aleppo but not quoted therein: Three Orthodox astronomers did calculations that were reported at that Congress, June 28-July 3, 1977. Only one of the thee attended and presented at that Congress, Prof. Georges Contopoulos. Here is an excerpt from his presentation, p 55: The conclusion is that the present calculation of the date of Easter by the Orthodox Church is not in accordance with the letter of the 1st Ecumenical Synod. It is not even in accordance with its spirit, which is to have all Christians celebrate Easter on the same day.
Now, what solutions can be proposed? The obvious solution is to follow immediately the Gregorian calendar. This has two obvious advantages:
a) It is in close agreement with the rule established by the 1st Ecumenical Synod, and
b) Easter will be celebrated the same Sunday by all Christians.
However, this solution has also some difficulties. I will not discuss the difficulties arising from any change introduced in the Church, due to the traditionalistic attitude of many people. This problem is for you [ajk:the bishops etc.] to discuss and solve …
I conclude my report … The calculation of the Orthodox Easter should be corrected as soon as possible. One possibility is to follow the present Gregorian Calendar …
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