Orthodox Leader Urges Harmony With Catholics

WASHINGTON--The spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians told U.S. Roman Catholic leaders this week that persistent and historic theological differences must not harm relations between the Eastern and Western churches.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, concluding a three-day visit to Washington, told Cardinals William Keeler of Baltimore and Theodore McCarrick of Washington that “we, as Christians, are charged by God himself to restore our unity, so that the world will believe in the divine mission of the church of Christ.”

Relations between the two churches have been cool since the Great Schism of 1054.

Bartholomew made clear that he did not intend to try to bridge those differences.

But he said both sides must make distinctions between “essential and nonessential differences so that the church does not appear divided due to matters of secondary importance.”