NEWS: February 28, 2025

Bird’s Eye View of the News

Atila Sinke Guimarães

CHANGING THE DATE OF EASTER – In this year of 2025 two historical events will take place. The first is the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which gathered in 325 from May to July in that little town not far from Constantinople.

The dates of Easter for Catholics & Schismatics only coincide in 2025

The second is that the dates of Easter in both the Catholic Church and the so-called Orthodox Church will coincide on this coming April 20. This last fact is a coincidence since the Catholic Church calculates its liturgical feasts according to the Gregorian Calendar while the “Orthodox” Church calculates its feasts according to the Julian Calendar.

It so happens that, besides its main goal to combat Arianism, one of the topics of the Council of Nicaea was to discuss the date of Easter. At the time of this early Council, which took place shortly after the Catholic Church left the Catacombs with the Edict of Milan in 313, the Church had not yet suffered the divisions that came later with the Great Schism of the East (1054) and Protestantism (1517).

So, the plan of Pope Francis is to take advantage of this anniversary to make an ecumenical encounter at Nicaea. He will invite to it the “orthodox” patriarch of Constantinople as the supposed spokesman of all the other branches of “orthodoxy,” as well as representatives of the World Council of Churches (WCC), which includes various Protestant sects. The goal of the meeting is to reaffirm the Nicaea Creed that is still professed by both Catholics and the “Orthodox,” and to unify the Easter date so that the Catholics and the “Orthodox” will celebrate this important feast on the same date each year.

I am basing this analysis on the document titled On the 1700 Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea: Opportunity & Challenge for Ecumenism (I 1700 anni del Concilio di Nicea, opportunità e sfida per l’ecumenismo – L’Osservatore Romano, January 18, 2025, pp. 4, 5), signed by Card. Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

According to Francis’ plan, this meeting at Nicaea would signify a landmark event for reuniting Catholics with all those heretics and schismatics.

I believe this plan is nothing more than wishful thinking which will not bring unity to those religions, but rather will increase confusion among Catholics. The reasons for this assertion follow:

The change of the Easter date, judging by the multiple “ecumenical” concessions already made by the Popes of this post-conciliar era, will not demand any change from the “orthodox” side. Instead it is much more probable that the Vatican will adopt the Julian Calendar and abandon the Gregorian Calendar for our liturgical feasts. If this takes place, it would be tantamount to the eruption of a universal earthquake in our Catholic liturgical year.

Francis bows to Bartholomew; in Nicaea he may do the same & adopt the Julian Calendar
The confusion started when Pius XII established a second Feast Day for St. Joseph on May 1 and greatly diminished the importance of his centuries-old Feast Day on March 19. Pius XII consequently changed the Feast Day of the Apostles SS Philip and James from May 1 to May 3, which Paul VI would change again to May 11. This is just one of many, many examples of changes made in the liturgical calendar. This confusion entered high speed with the constant arbitrary changes made in the Catholic Martyrology, mostly by Paul VI. With Francis’ possible adoption of Julian Calendar, the subversion of the Catholic liturgical calendar would be complete, that is, it would reach the level of total chaos.
The long desired unity that purports to be achieved at Nicaea with the patriarch of Constantinople pretending that he represents all the branches of “orthodoxy” is nothing but a propaganda bluff. Each branch of the “orthodox” church is fully autonomous from the others, relying exclusively on the temporal government of the State where it lives.

For instance, Bartholomew, patriarch of Constantinople, lives on the permissions and stipends of the Turkish government of its Muslim President Recep Erdogan, while Kirill, patriarch of Moscow, relies on the good will and material assistance of the communist government of Vladimir Putin. To imagine that Bartholomew has any authority over the patriarch of Moscow is completely out of reality. The same can be said for the other “orthodox” patriarchs in the various countries where they exist. None of them obeys Bartholomew.

So, in the few matters upon which Francis and Bartholomew might agree, the latter represents only himself and his scanty followers in Turkey, and no one else.
With this presupposition – that the “orthodox” rely on their local governments – preeminence should be judged not by Bartholomew’s patriarchal authority, but rather by the number of followers that each individual church has in its own country. Below are the general numbers of “orthodox” followers per country, duly updated for this article:

The Russian ‘Orthodox’ Church alone has more followers than all the others together
- Russia – 90,000,000
- Rumania – 16,370,000
- Greece – 10,000,000
- Serbia – 8,000,000
- Bulgaria – 4,100,000
- Constantinople – 4,000,000
- Antioch – 1,100,000
- Poland – 500,000
- Jerusalem/Holy Land – 350,000
- Alexandria – 110,000
Some observations immediately jump out from these numbers:
- Of the 154,530,000 followers of all the main “orthodox” churches, Bartholomew represents just 4,000,000, which is only 2.88% of the total.
- Of the 10 patriarchates listed above, those of Russia, Greece and Bulgaria are entirely opposed to ecumenism; this constitutes 104,100,000 followers, or 67.36%. The patriarchates of Rumania, Serbia, Antioch and Jerusalem/ Holy Land, which admit some ecumenism with reservations – especially regarding the date change of Easter, count 35,820,000 followers altogether, or 23.17%. Those of Constantinople, Poland and Alexandria, which are very favorable to ecumenism, represent 4,610,000 followers, or 2.98%.
- The Moscow patriarchate alone, under the hegemony of Vladimir Putin, has 90,000,000 followers, or 58.24% of the total followers of the “orthodox” churches around the world.
Francis the Demolisher
What these numbers demonstrate is that a possible agreement to be reached between Francis and Bartholomew at Nicaea will not mean that most – or even a large part – of the “orthodox” will agree with the Catholic Church on changing the Easter date, or any other topic. Rather it will mean that the “ecumenical” agreement is a one-sided concession on the part of the Catholic Church, without demanding any practical change from the followers of that schismatic/heretical “orthodoxy.”
An analogous lack of representation is found in the World Council of Churches (WCC). I remember writing in this column more than 20 years ago that the WCC was moribund. Today, we can certainly say that it has become a frozen cadaver, which is artificially brought to life on occasions like the Nicaea meeting to feed the ecumenical utopia. It does not represent the ensemble of the Protestant sects, as it initially planned to do in 1948.

The conclusion is that the only real effect that would come from a Nicaea “ecumenical” meeting is an enormous harm for the Catholic Church, whose entire liturgical calendar would be subverted. Consequently, the turmoil would increase for Catholics in their lives of piety; it would cause a turmoil much greater than the mess which we are living in today.

This question immediately arises: Is not Francis the Destroyer planning this ecumenical pantomime to specifically achieve this result?

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