Will the Orthodox and Catholic Churches Reunite? 1965, Balamand and What Stands in the Way

Every few years a headline says that the Orthodox and Catholic Churches are closer than ever: a pope and a patriarch embrace, a declaration is signed. The question behind the headline is simple: will the two Churches be one again, and on what terms? This article follows the record from 1965 to 2025, courteously toward Rome and firmly on the point that matters: the Orthodox Church cannot be reunited with anyone at the price of the faith she has received.

For how the split came about, see Why Did the Orthodox and Catholic Churches Split?; for the popes since 1958, The Modern Papacy; for the papal claims, Vatican I; and for the case for the Orthodox faith, Why Orthodoxy.

In brief

In 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I removed the sentences of excommunication of 1054 "from memory and from the midst of the Church." The same declaration said the gesture was "not sufficient to end both old and more recent differences," and communion was not restored. Since then a joint commission has produced documents at Balamand (1993), Ravenna (2007), Chieti (2016) and Alexandria (2023), and in November 2025 Pope Leo XIV and Patriarch Bartholomew repeated their commitment to the "restoration of full communion." What stands in the way has not changed in kind: the Roman claims to universal jurisdiction and infallibility, the Filioque, the later Roman dogmas, the Eastern Catholic Churches, and divisions within Orthodoxy.

Thesis: reunion is a worthy thing to pray for and work toward, but it can only come as unity in one faith, which means Rome's return to the faith of the first millennium on the papal claims and the Filioque, not a political arrangement or an agreement to differ.

What happened in 1965, exactly

On December 7, 1965, Paul VI and Athenagoras I issued a joint declaration, read simultaneously at a public session of the Second Vatican Council in Rome and at a ceremony in Istanbul. It recalls "the sentence of excommunication leveled against the Patriarch Michael Cerularius and two other persons by the legate of the Roman See under the leadership of Cardinal Humbertus," and the "similar sentence" pronounced in return by the patriarch and his synod. It judges that those who issued them "had directed their censures against the persons concerned and not the Churches," and that the censures "were not intended to break ecclesiastical communion between the Sees of Rome and Constantinople."¹

The two leaders "regret the offensive words, the reproaches without foundation, and the reprehensible gestures which, on both sides, have marked or accompanied the sad events of this period"; they "regret and remove both from memory and from the midst of the Church the sentences of excommunication ... and they commit these excommunications to oblivion"; and they deplore "the preceding and later vexing events" that "eventually led to the effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion."¹

Three things follow from the text. First, it lifted sentences of 1054 against named persons; it did not declare that the Churches were reunited, and it did not touch the doctrinal disagreements. Second, it says so itself: the gesture "is not sufficient to end both old and more recent differences," which will be overcome through "an efficacious determination to arrive at a common understanding and expression of the faith of the Apostles and its demands." Third, it names the goal as "full communion of faith, fraternal accord and sacramental life which existed among them during the first thousand years of the life of the Church."¹ Communion of faith comes first in the sentence. {{very-strong: The 1965 declaration lifted the mutual excommunications of 1054 but did not restore communion or settle any doctrinal difference, as its own text says.}} The date 1054 itself is conventional (see our article on the split); the break grew over centuries, and the 1965 declaration speaks of "the effective rupture" that followed.

How Rome speaks of the Orthodox

The Catholic Church's own language toward the Orthodox is warm, and it deserves to be stated fairly. The Second Vatican Council's decree on ecumenism says of the Eastern Churches that, "although separated from us, [they] possess true sacraments, above all by apostolic succession, the priesthood and the Eucharist, whereby they are linked with us in closest intimacy."² The same words say "separated from us": Rome sees the Orthodox as a Church not yet in full communion with her. The Orthodox Church receives the courtesy with thanks and says in turn that she is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Creed. As an OCA answer puts it, "Orthodoxy sees herself as the fullness of the Church, not the 'other half' of the Church, as implied in the notion of a 'sister church.'"³ The differences are about the faith, not about manners. See Vatican II: Did the Catholic Church Change Its Doctrine?

What the documents since 1965 have said

Date	Document or event	What it said	What it did not do
7 Dec 1965	Paul VI and Athenagoras I, Joint Declaration	Regretted the 1054 events and committed the excommunications "to oblivion."	Restore communion or resolve any doctrinal issue.
June 1993	Balamand, Joint International Commission	Rejected "uniatism" as a method; affirmed that the Eastern Catholic Churches have "the right to exist."	Settle the status of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
13 Oct 2007	Ravenna Document	Agreed that Rome held the first place in the order of the Churches in the first millennium.	Agree on what that first place involved.
21 Sept 2016	Chieti Document	Described synodality and primacy in the first millennium.	Address the second millennium.
7 June 2023	Alexandria Document	Read the second millennium together and recorded that the Orthodox found Vatican I's papal teaching "unacceptable."	Win every delegation's agreement, or resolve that teaching.
29 Nov 2025	Leo XIV and Bartholomew I, Joint Declaration (Istanbul)	Reaffirmed the goal of "full communion" after the Nicaea anniversary.	Announce a date or terms.

Balamand (1993)

The commission's Balamand text on "uniatism" deals with a painful subject. It says of the Eastern Catholic Churches that "as part of the Catholic Communion, [they] have the right to exist and to act in answer to the spiritual needs of their faithful," and that "uniatism" "can no longer be accepted either as a method to be followed nor as a model of the unity our Churches are seeking." It also says that "the Catholic Churches and the Orthodox Churches recognize each other as Sister Churches."⁴ The Eastern Catholic Churches remain; for their history and the Orthodox objection to them, see Uniatism and Eastern Catholic Churches.

Ravenna (2007) and Chieti (2016)

At Ravenna the commission agreed that in the era of the undivided Church "Rome, as the Church that 'presides in love'," occupied "the first place in the taxis, and that the bishop of Rome was therefore the protos among the patriarchs." The sentence goes on at once: "They disagree, however, on the interpretation of the historical evidence from this era regarding the prerogatives of the bishop of Rome as protos."⁵ On universal primacy the text says: "While the fact of primacy at the universal level is accepted by both East and West, there are differences of understanding with regard to the manner in which it is to be exercised, and also with regard to its scriptural and theological foundations." It then asks how "the teaching of the first and second Vatican councils on the universal primacy" should be "understood and lived in the light of the ecclesial practice of the first millennium."⁵ The Moscow delegation withdrew from the meeting because the Ecumenical Patriarchate had invited a delegate of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church; an editorial in the OCA's magazine The Orthodox Church, filed among the statements of Fr Leonid Kishkovsky, noted that the dispute "demonstrated that the balance between conciliarity and primacy articulated in the Orthodox teaching on the nature of the Church is not easily found in practice."⁶ The same editorial put the Orthodox position on the Ravenna text in one sentence: "For the Orthodox, unity comes before primacy."⁶

The Chieti text of 2016 turned to the first millennium. It records that "appeals to the bishop of Rome from the East expressed the communion of the Church, but the bishop of Rome did not exercise canonical authority over the churches of the East," and that "throughout the first millennium, the Church in the East and the West was united in preserving the apostolic faith, maintaining the apostolic succession of bishops, developing structures of synodality inseparably linked with primacy." It then asks both Churches to consider "how primacy, synodality, and the interrelatedness between them can be conceived and exercised today and in the future."⁷ The communiqué of the Chieti meeting says that "Disagreement with some paragraphs of the document was expressed by the delegation of the Georgian Patriarchate."⁸ The meeting was attended by all the Orthodox Churches except Bulgaria, Moscow among them.

Alexandria (2023) and Nicaea (2025)

The commission met in Alexandria from June 1 to 7, 2023 and reached agreement on "Synodality and Primacy in the Second Millennium and Today." Its conclusion states that "the interdependence of synodality and primacy is a fundamental principle in the life of the Church." Ten Orthodox Churches were represented, among them the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Romania, Georgia and Greece; Moscow, Antioch, Serbia and Bulgaria were not. "Disagreement with some paragraphs" was expressed by the delegation of Georgia, and the commission ruled that a line of the Chieti text be read in light of Canon 9 of Chalcedon.⁹

On November 29, 2025, at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, the day after an ecumenical prayer at Iznik (ancient Nicaea) for the 1700th anniversary of the Council, Leo XIV and Bartholomew signed a joint declaration. They state that they "continue to walk with firm determination on the path of dialogue ... towards the hoped-for restoration of full communion between our sister Churches," and that "what binds us together is the faith expressed in the creed of Nicaea." They give thanks that all Christians kept Easter on the same day that year, express the desire to keep exploring a way to celebrate it together every year, and say the commission "in its current phase is examining issues that have historically been considered divisive."¹⁰ It is warm, and it is not a union.

What stands in the way

The papal claims

The Roman Catholic Church teaches, in the constitution Pastor Aeternus of the First Vatican Council (1870), that anyone who says the Roman pontiff "has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church" is anathema, and that when he defines a doctrine of faith or morals the definitions "are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable."¹¹ Pope John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint (1995) wrote that he was "heeding the request made of me to find a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation."¹² The invitation is sincere, and its limit is stated in the same sentence.

The OCA editorial on Ravenna says there "is, and always has been, an Orthodox consensus that the bishop of Rome holds a primacy of honor among all the patriarchs and bishops of the Christian West and the Christian East," when there is no schism, and that "the primacy which the bishop of Rome has depends on the full unity of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church." It adds: "The more definite the claims for papal authority became, the less inclined were the Eastern Churches to accept these claims."⁶ Even the joint commission's Alexandria text records that Vatican I's teaching on universal jurisdiction and infallibility "was considered unacceptable by the Orthodox Church," as "a serious departure from the canonical tradition of the Fathers and the ecumenical councils."⁹ The Orthodox Church holds that those definitions are not apostolic and are an error. The evidence is set out in Upon This Rock, Did the Early Church Believe in Papal Supremacy?, Papal Infallibility, The Forgeries Behind Papal Power and What the Ecumenical Councils Said About Rome.

The Filioque

The Creed of 381, received by the whole Church, confesses the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father, in the words of Christ: the Spirit of truth "which proceedeth from the Father" (John 15:26).¹³ The Latin Church added "and the Son." The Orthodox Church holds that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and that the addition, in the Creed and in doctrine, is an error that has to be corrected. A North American consultation of Orthodox and Catholic theologians, whose 2003 statement is a proposal and not an act of either Church, recommended that "the Catholic Church, as a consequence of the normative and irrevocable dogmatic value of the Creed of 381, use the original Greek text alone in making translations of that Creed for catechetical and liturgical use," and that the two sides "refrain from labeling as heretical the traditions of the other side." The same statement asks that the disagreement on the Spirit's origin be distinguished "as far as possible" from "the ecclesiological issues of primacy and doctrinal authority."¹⁴ The Orthodox can welcome the first recommendation; the second is a proposal of theologians, and the Church's own synods have judged the teaching itself. The Eastern Patriarchs wrote in 1848 that the doctrine of the Spirit "proceeding from the Father and the Son is essentially heresy," and that their love and zeal worked "for the covenanted preservation of the pure, undefiled, divine, spotless, and perfect Creed of the Christian Faith."¹⁵ Orthodox today speak more gently of persons, but the Church has never withdrawn that judgment on the teaching. See The Filioque.

The later Roman teachings

The dialogue so far has been about primacy and the Creed, but the Orthodox Church also rejects as errors the Roman dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine of purgatory and the system of indulgences. Each would need to be addressed before the Churches could say that they confess one faith. See The Immaculate Conception and Indulgences.

The lesson of Florence

The decree of union of Florence (July 6, 1439) was issued "with the agreement" of the Greek emperor and of representatives of the Eastern Church, and declared that "the wall that divided the western and the eastern church has been removed."¹⁶ The Orthodox Church did not receive it; even the joint commission's Alexandria text says the union "was subsequently not received by the Greek Church" and was "officially rejected by the Council of Constantinople in 1484"⁹ (see Florence). The sack of Constantinople in 1204 had earlier deepened the division (1204). A reunion agreed by delegates and not received by the Churches would repeat Florence.

Disunity within Orthodoxy

The Orthodox Church does not have a single head who can sign for all. The Holy and Great Council of Crete in June 2016 met without four of the autocephalous Churches: Antioch, Bulgaria, Georgia and Russia, which announced their absence less than two weeks before it began.¹⁷ In October 2018 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to break "Eucharistic communion" with the Ecumenical Patriarchate after Constantinople moved to grant autocephaly to the Church of Ukraine.¹⁸ Any reunion with Rome would have to be received by all the local Churches, in council, and the Orthodox are still working out how to meet (see Why Are There So Many Orthodox Jurisdictions?).

Objections

"The schism was politics and misunderstanding." The 1965 declaration itself cites "lack of understanding and mutual trust" among the causes of the rupture, and politics played a large part; but the same text says that "old and more recent differences" remain, and its goal is "a common understanding and expression of the faith of the Apostles." The doctrinal questions are real, and Ravenna, Chieti and Alexandria are all about one of them.

"The Orthodox are stubborn; Rome has offered everything." Rome has offered courtesy and a willingness to discuss the exercise of primacy. She has not withdrawn the Vatican I definitions, and Ut Unum Sint says in so many words that it will not renounce "what is essential" to the office. An Orthodox Christian can be glad of the invitation and still say that the definitions are the obstacle.

"Then the dialogue is pointless." It is not. It has brought a pope and a patriarch together at a council's anniversary, produced common readings of the first millennium and removed some of the old bitterness. It has also shown where the disagreement lies, and that is the first step toward any healing. Rome's decree allows some common worship, but the Orthodox Church does not: "Orthodox Christians are not permitted to receive Communion in non-Orthodox communities, including the Roman Catholic. To do so would imply a unity that in fact does not yet exist."³ The 1848 Encyclical already called "all spiritual communion in worship" with those who hold the Filioque "unlawful."¹⁵

What we can say confidently

• The 1965 Joint Declaration lifted the 1054 excommunications and said itself that this did not end the differences; communion was not restored.
• The joint commission produced documents at Balamand (1993), Ravenna (2007), Chieti (2016) and Alexandria (2023); the Russian delegation withdrew from Ravenna, and Georgia dissented from some paragraphs at Chieti and Alexandria.
• On November 29, 2025, Leo XIV and Bartholomew I signed a joint declaration reaffirming the goal of full communion.
• The Orthodox Church rejects the Roman claims of universal jurisdiction and infallibility, the Filioque and the later Roman dogmas; the commission's own Alexandria text records that Vatican I's papal teaching was "unacceptable" to the Orthodox.

What remains disputed

• How far the events of 1054 broke communion, as against the slower break over centuries; the 1965 declaration says the censures were against persons, and historians differ on the timing.
• What the first millennium shows about the prerogatives of the bishop of Rome: Ravenna records that the two sides "disagree ... on the interpretation of the historical evidence."
• How binding the commission's texts are: they are statements of a joint commission, and the Orthodox Churches have not received them in one voice.
• The present state of relations within Orthodoxy, which this article records only as far as the sources it cites.

Conclusion

The Lord prayed "that they all may be one" (John 17:21), and the apostle names the ground of it: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4:5). The Orthodox Church wants that unity and says what it requires. She keeps praying for Rome, meeting her in charity and speaking plainly about the faith, and she will not accept a union that is not a union in the Creed and the order of the Church as the first millennium held them. To see why she believes she holds that faith, continue to Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Joint Catholic-Orthodox Declaration of Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, 7 December 1965, English text on the Holy See's site, https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/speeches/1965/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19651207_common-declaration.html.
2. Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio (21 November 1964), no. 15, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19641121_unitatis-redintegratio_en.html.
3. Orthodox Church in America, Questions and Answers, "Communion in Roman Catholic Church" (unsigned reply), https://www.oca.org/questions/romancatholicism/communion-in-roman-catholic-church.
4. Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, "Uniatism, Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion" (Balamand, 23 June 1993), nos. 3, 12 to 14, https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-lingua-inglese.html.
5. Joint International Commission, "Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church: Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority" (Ravenna, 13 October 2007), nos. 41, 43 and 45, https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-inglese.html.
6. "Primacy theme of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue," editorial in The Orthodox Church (OCA), Nativity/Theophany 2007, vol. 43, listed on oca.org among the statements of the Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky, https://www.oca.org/holy-synod/statements/fr-kishkovsky/primacy-theme-of-catholic-orthodox-dialogue. On the Moscow delegation's withdrawal see also EWTN News, "Russian Orthodox walk out of ecumenical talks," https://www.ewtnnews.com/vatican/russian-orthodox-walk-out-of-ecumenical-talks.
7. Joint International Commission, "Synodality and Primacy during the First Millennium: Towards a Common Understanding in Service to the Unity of the Church" (Chieti, 21 September 2016), nos. 19 to 21, https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/testo-in-inglese1.html.
8. Joint International Commission, Communiqué of the 14th Plenary Session (Chieti, 16 to 21 September 2016), https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/sessioni-plenarie/2016-sessione-plenaria-della-commissione--chieti---comunicato-st.html.
9. Joint International Commission, "Synodality and Primacy in the Second Millennium and Today" (Alexandria, 7 June 2023), nos. 1.19, 3.10 and 5.4, English text on the Dicastery's site, https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/fr/dialoghi/sezione-orientale/chiese-ortodosse-di-tradizione-bizantina/commissione-mista-internazionale-per-il-dialogo-teologico-tra-la/documenti-di-dialogo/document-d-alexandrie---synodalite-et-primaute-au-deuxieme-mille.pdf; and the Communiqué of the 15th Plenary Session (1 to 7 June 2023), https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/news/2023/2023-06-09-dialogo-internazionale-con-la-chiesa-ortodossas.html and https://ecumenism.net/?p=13725.
10. Joint Declaration of Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, signed at the Patriarchal Palace, Istanbul, 29 November 2025, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/travels/2025/documents/20251129-dichiarazione-congiunta.html; dates of the Iznik prayer (28 November) and the signing from the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/news/2025/2025-12-01-viaggio-apostolico-in-turchia-e-libano.html.
11. First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus (Session 4, 18 July 1870), English text at https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm.
12. John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint (25 May 1995), no. 95, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25051995_ut-unum-sint.html.
13. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text), checked against the KJV text served by this site's Bible reader (https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/texts?v=kjv): John 15:26, John 17:21 and Ephesians 4:5.
14. North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, "The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?" (2003), Recommendations, https://ecumenism.net/archive/docu/2003_na-o-rc_filioque_en.php.
15. Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, 1848, "A Reply to the Epistle of Pope Pius IX, 'to the Easterns'," Fordham Internet Modern History Sourcebook (from orthodoxinfo.com; translator not named), https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/mod/1848orthodoxencyclical.asp.
16. Council of Florence, Session 6 (6 July 1439), decree of union with the Greeks (Laetentur caeli), English text at https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum17.htm.
17. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, "Council meets despite absence of four patriarchates," America, 7 July 2016, https://www.americamagazine.org/from-our-archives/2016/07/07/historic-orthodox-council-meets-despite-absence-four-churches/.
18. "Russian Orthodox Church breaks 'Eucharistic communion' with Patriarchate of Constantinople," Vatican News, 16 October 2018, https://vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2018-10/russian-orthodox-break-communion-with-ecumenical-patriarch.html.

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text).

Joint documents and papal texts

• Joint Declaration of Paul VI and Athenagoras I (1965); Joint Declaration of Leo XIV and Bartholomew I (2025).
• Joint International Commission documents: Balamand (1993), Ravenna (2007), Chieti (2016), Alexandria (2023), with the Chieti and Alexandria communiqués.
• First Vatican Council, Pastor Aeternus (1870); Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio (1964); John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint (1995).
• North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation, "The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue?" (2003).

Orthodox and other sources

• Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs (1848).
• OCA, "Primacy theme of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue" (2007); Questions and Answers, "Communion in Roman Catholic Church."
• Gavrilyuk, Paul L. "Council meets despite absence of four patriarchates." America, 2016.
• EWTN News, "Russian Orthodox walk out of ecumenical talks" (2007); Vatican News, "Russian Orthodox Church breaks 'Eucharistic communion'" (2018).