MESSAGE OF PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW
FOR THE FEAST OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL
29 June 2025
Your Holiness, Dear Brother in the Lord,
It is with heartfelt joy that we send You this greeting, in the first year of Your Holiness’ pontificate, on the patronal feast of the Church of Rome, the Feast of the Chief Apostles Peter and Paul. We convey this greeting to Your Holiness through our Patriarchal Delegation consisting of His Eminence Elder Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon, the Very Reverend Grand Ecclesiarch Aetios, Director of the Private Patriarchal Office, and the Very Reverend Grand Syncellus Hieronymos.
We continue to mourn the departure of Your predecessor, the ever-memorable Pope Francis—with whom we shared so much—while looking upon the new ministry of Your Holiness with expectation and hope. By the grace of God, much has been achieved as we humbly walk together along the path of dialogue towards the fullness of unity. Our mutual exchange of greetings for the patronal feasts of our respective sees is one such sign of this dialogue in action—a dialogue of love, of truth, and of peace.
Our hearts were warmed when we learned of Your Holiness’ motto, taken from the great Church Father St Augustine, beloved to You and to us: In Illo uno unum. We receive this as a precious sign of Your Holiness’ thirst for Christian unity, one based on a deeply patristic vision of ecclesiology springing from the wellspring of the New Testament itself, and in particular, from the writings of the Apostle Paul whose memory we so joyously keep today. It is this vision which animates the official dialogue between our Churches and which continues to bear much fruit. The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue, having released a common agreed statement at Alexandria in 2023 entitled “Synodality and Primacy in the Second Millennium and Today,” is working diligently towards agreed statements on the issues that historically have most divided us. The fact that our dialogue is now able to approach these matters in a spirit of peace and charity is itself yet another sign of the progress we are making towards unity.
In his 295th homily, St Augustine preaches with great inspiration on the occasion of this sacred feast, which had already become commonplace in his time. Echoing his sentiments elsewhere and embraced by Your Holiness, he tells us that we celebrate “one day for the passion of two apostles. But those two also were as one” (Sermon 295.7). In these few words, the great saint summarizes the significance of the double commemoration: not Peter alone, nor Paul alone, but Peter and Paul together, for in the one Christ they are one. When Peter is singled out by Our Lord, the purpose is wholly connected to the service of unity: “when Christ speaks to one man, unity is being commended to us” (Sermon 295.4). St Augustine expresses beautifully the intimate connection between primacy and synodality, the one and the many, in the life of the Church.
In the same homily, St Augustine exhorts us in the following manner: “We are celebrating a feast day, consecrated for us by the blood of the apostles. Let us love their faith, their lives, their labours, their sufferings, their confession of faith, their preaching. We make progress ourselves, you see, by loving them” (Sermon 295.8). At the dawn of Your Holiness’ pontificate, clothed as it is with a special love and devotion for this great saint, we take these words of St Augustine as prophetic for our own time and task. The true progress towards unity for which we long will only come about through our love for, and consequent imitation of, these towering saints of God, the Chief Apostles Peter and Paul.
Your Holiness, dearest brother Leo, we are in the midst of commemorating the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea in 325, a fitting time in which to stand together for the “faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). The faith proclaimed at Nicaea is the faith of Peter and Paul, the faith of the subsequent Ecumenical Councils, and of the whole Church of God. We are reminded on this bright occasion of the famous incident at the Fourth Ecumenical Council held at Chalcedon in 451, when the Council Fathers, hearing the saving Tome composed by Your ever-memorable predecessor St Leo the Great read aloud, exclaimed with one voice: “Peter has spoken through Leo.” In this tragic time of “wars and rumours of wars” (Matt. 24:6), of ecological crisis, religious confusion, and pervasive anxiety, we fervently pray that in our common quest to proclaim the saving faith of Nicaea, which is none other than the Christian faith, Your Holiness’ ministry might always be inspired and moved by the same Spirit that moved Your forebear and heavenly patron. Then, the fruits of the Spirit being manifest through Your person, may the acclamation of old joyously resound once more: “Peter has spoken through Leo.”
At the Ecumenical Patriarchate, on the twenty-ninth of June, 2025
Your Holiness’ beloved Brother in Christ,
+ Bartholomew
Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome
and Ecumenical Patriarch