On June 3-7, 2024, a meeting of the Coordinating Committee of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church was held in Bari, Italy. Co-presidents of the Committee are Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and Metropolitan Job Getcha of Pisidia, representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
As part of the meeting, the Roman Catholic members celebrated the Eucharist at Bari Cathedral in the presence of the Orthodox members and the Christian faithful, and two days later the Divine Liturgy over the relics of St Nicholas was celebrated in the crypt of the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari in the presence of the Roman Catholic members and the Christian faithful.
The coordinating committee reviewed the draft document “Towards Unity in Faith: Theological and Canonical Issues”. It summarizes the achievements of the dialogue that took place from the early 1980s to the present, and identifies several issues that still need to be resolved between Roman Catholics and the Orthodox. In particular, the Committee began to consider the issues related to the Filioque and Infallibility of the Pope.
This meeting was preceded by a plenary session of the Commission held in June 2023 in Alexandria, Egypt, at the invitation of the Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa Theodoros. It became the fifteenth in a series of plenary sessions since 1980. This time the document was agreed upon “Synodality and Primacy in the Second Millennium and Today”.
At that time, 18 Catholic members and representatives of 10 local Orthodox Churches were present at the Session, namely the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Patriarchate of Romania, the Patriarchate of Georgia, the Church of Cyprus, the Church of Greece, the Church of Poland, the Church of Albania and the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Accordingly, representatives of several local Orthodox churches – Antiochian, Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian were absent. Representatives of the Orthodox Church of America and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were also absent due to the fact that they remain only partially recognized by World Orthodoxy.
The document “Synodality and Primacy in the Second Millennium and Today” in English translation can be found at http://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/document-d-alexandrie—synodalite-et-primaute-au-deuxieme-mille.html.