Common Declaration of Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I
The declaration issued in Rome on 28 October 1967 when Patriarch Athenagoras I visited Pope Paul VI. It calls the two churches sister churches and says that obstacles remain before full communion can be re-established.
The declaration was made at the end of the patriarch’s visit to Rome, where, it says, the two men prayed together with the bishops of the Synod of the Roman Catholic Church. Its second paragraph is the one cited in this wiki. It recognises that there is still a long way to go, that points remain to be clarified and obstacles to be overcome before the unity in the profession of faith that is needed for re-establishing full communion, and it rejoices that the two churches are rediscovering each other as sister churches.
It is evidence, in the words of the two men who made the act of 1965, that neither regarded communion as restored two years afterwards. See Rome and Constantinople Lift the Anathemas of 1054.
Cited in
- 7 December 1965, firm date