Pope Francis Wants a Common Easter Date for Christians

“The Catholic Church is open to accepting the date on which everyone has agreed: a date of unity.” On January 25, 2025, Pope Francis renewed his desire to see the East and the West join on a common date for celebrating the Resurrection.

“I renew my appeal that this coincidence may serve as a call to all Christians to take a decisive step toward unity around a common date for Easter,” insisted the Pope, noting that this year, Easter Sunday will be celebrated on the same day by all Christians.

The custom of the Roman Church of setting the date of Easter on the first Sunday following the full moon that follows the spring equinox – set for March 21 – took a long time to establish itself. The divergence from the East was accentuated when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in the West.

The first Easter controversies date back to the second century. It is not known exactly how the Church set the date. However, since the Resurrection of Christ was close to the Jewish Passover, it follows that the date of the Christian feast must have been set in connection with the date of the Jewish feast.

From the beginning of the second century, historians have noted the existence of two observances. One, followed especially in proconsular Asia, celebrated Easter on the Jewish feast day, the 14th day of the month of Nisan, hence its name of “Quartodeciman” observance. The other, based on the fact that the Savior rose on a Sunday, celebrated Easter on the Sunday, probably the one following the 14th of Nisan.

During the Quartodeciman crisis, St. Irenaeus wrote a letter to Pope Victor that sheds light on the attitude of the Roman Church regarding the Easter question in the second century: “The priests [popes] who, before Soter, presided over the Church that you now direct, Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, Xystus, did not observe the 14th of Nisan and did not allow it to be observed by their faithful.”

"They were not for this reason less peacefully disposed towards the faithful of the Churches of Quartodeciman observance who came to them; yet the opposition of the two uses was present and more manifest. No one was ever excommunicated for this reason. The priests, your predecessors, even sent the Eucharist to those of the Churches of Quartodeciman observance."

The ecclesiastical historian Socrates (5th century) notes that originally the Jews always celebrated Passover after the equinox. After the destruction of the Temple, the Jews neglected the equinox in the Passover calculation. By imitation, the Quartodecimans followed this practice, which caused many divisions.

The Council of Nicaea (325) took up this question. The letter sent by the council to the Church of Alexandria explains: "Agreement has been established concerning our most holy Easter. All our brothers of the East who did not agree in this with the Romans, with you, and with those who follow your customs from the beginning, will henceforth celebrate Easter at the same time as you.”

The circular sent later by the Emperor Constantine is not more explicit. It merely says that, from now on, everyone will follow the Easter custom which conforms to the one found in "the city of Rome, Italy, and all of Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, all of Libya, Greece, the diocese of Asia, that of Pontus and Cilicia."

The agreement reached at Nicaea allowed the bishops of the East who, until then, celebrated Easter on the Sunday following the Jewish holiday, to undertake to celebrate it on the same day as all the other Churches, after the equinox, as in Rome and Alexandria. It seems that this agreement was only verbal; no text of it has been preserved. This explains why the quarrel lasted until the 8th century.

It rebounded after the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by the Roman Church in 1582. An explanation is necessary: ​​the revolution of the earth around the sun takes 365.2422 days; hence the leap years to rectify the gap. Every four years a day was added to fill it. But the rectification was based on 365.25 days, with an excess of 11 minutes per year.

After 1500 years, a delay of ten days could be observed between the theoretical calendar and the solar calendar. In 1582, these ten days were removed between October 4 and 15. The new calendar, by modifying the date of Easter (but not its method of calculation), caused a gap with the Eastern Christians (both Catholic and Orthodox), who remained faithful to the Julian calendar.

For those who are curious, it should be noted that, in order to avoid falling back into this discrepancy, three leap years have been eliminated every 400 years (in fact, the secular years that are not divisible by 400, such as 1700, 1800 and 1900), which are enough for a few thousand years.

Will Pope Francis – if he recovers his health – succeed in unifying the date of Easter for all Christians? We can hope so, but it may prove to be a Hurculean task.