The Roman Catholic Church may revise the method of calculating the date of Easter celebrations so that all Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on the same day. Pope Francis stated this.
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This is reported by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
According to the pontiff, the Roman Catholic Church is ready to discuss a single date for Easter, which would be celebrated “in Rome, Constantinople and Moscow.”
“A Catholic and an Orthodox Christian meet and ask: “Has your Christ risen already? Mine is in a week,” the local newspaper quotes Francis as saying.
According to the Catholic calendar, Easter is calculated based on the first solstice after the full moon in March. For the Orthodox, the calculation is more complex. As a rule, the difference between the dates of Catholic and Orthodox Easter is one week, but sometimes it can differ by a month. Easters often coincide.
As the newspaper points out, a possible single date could be the third Sunday in April. The idea of uniting the dates of Easter had already been voiced by Francis, and even earlier the readiness to change the calendar was announced during the pontificate of Pope Paul VI (1963-1978).
The issue of a single date for Easter may become a topic of discussion at the Ecumenical (Pan-Orthodox) Council in 2016.
Let us remind you that this year Catholics celebrated Easter on April 5, Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter on April 12.