CV NEWS FEED // The leader of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston on May 5, the date when Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter Sunday this year, told fellow Bostoner Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley that “the time has come for Christianity to celebrate Easter on the same day.”
In a video that Aristomenis Papadimitriou, the director of archives and research for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on May 6, Metropolis Methodios thanked Cardinal O’Malley for attending the Easter evening service.
“As we have said many times in the past, both of us are blessed by God to celebrate Easter twice, once in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and second in this Cathedral Church,” Metropolis Methodios said.
The Cathedral of the Holy Cross is the mother church of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.
Yet, he said, both leaders seek to celebrate Easter on the same day and hope that a Patriarch and Pope will meet during the coming year and determine when exactly both should celebrate Christmas and Easter. The year 2024 marks the 1700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Synod, the first Council of Nicea.
“I don’t need to welcome you here because this is your cathedral as well,” Metropolis Methodios noted. “The people that are in the congregation love and respect you because they recognize in you a man of God, a leader of our church, a leader of the Boston community and a leader of the religious community in America.”
He said he prays that God will continue to grant the Cardinal years of good health for years to come so that he may continue “shining the radiant light of (the) Lord’s Resurrection in the community.”
Greek Reporter, an international Greek news network, reported that the gap between when Greek Orthodox believers and Catholic Christians celebrate Easter, or Pascha, is getting bigger because of the 19-year Metonic cycle, which the Orthodox Church uses to count when spring full moons will occur. Also, the Greek Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, which was in effect at the time of the first Council of Nicea, while the Western Christian churches use the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian and the Julian-Metonic calendars have sometimes prompted all these Christian groups to celebrate Easter on the same Sunday, but the last time that they can hold the celebrations on the same date, based on current astronomical estimates, is in the year 2698.
