Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has invited the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem to a brotherly Synaxis on 30 November, the patronal feast of the Church of Constantinople.
The invitation was extended in a recent letter, in which the Ecumenical Patriarch proposed that the four remaining ancient Apostolic Thrones—Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem—come together to discuss the major challenges facing the Church and the faithful.
Referring to the initiative during his address to the 27th International Congress of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches in Budapest, Bartholomew said: “Precisely because we attach such importance to this ancient institution and to the pastoral responsibility which it entails,” he had invited the three Eastern Patriarchs to the Synaxis.
He explained that the gathering would enable the four Patriarchates, “bound by the historical and theological debt bequeathed to us by the Holy Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils,” to act together “so that together … we might conciliarly discern great and pressing challenges confronting the Christ-named people of God in our rapidly changing world.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch linked the proposed Synaxis to the continuing significance of the ancient institution of the Pentarchy and to the pastoral responsibility of the Eastern Patriarchates in the absence of full communion with the Church of Rome.
In the same address, Bartholomew reaffirmed his hope for “the restoration of full communion with the Church of Rome,” so that “the Pentarchy may once again be whole” and the “five-stringed lyre” of the universal Church may again resound “in the fullness of its ancient harmony.”
He also welcomed the restoration of the title “Patriarch of the West” in 2024, describing it as “a small but far from insignificant step” towards the continuation of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.
