VATICAN CITY — Easter belongs to Christ, not to people deciding where it falls on a calendar, Pope Francis said. “Easter does not take place by our own initiative or by one calendar or another. Easter occurred because God ‘so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life,’” the pope said. “Let us not close ourselves within our own ideas, plans, calendars or ‘our’ Easter. Easter belongs to Christ!” he said during an audience at the Vatican Sept. 19. The pope was speaking to a delegation of members of the “Pasqua Together 2025” initiative. The ecumenical initiative, founded in 2022, calls on Orthodox and mainline Christian churches to celebrate Easter on a common date. The year 2025 will mark both the Holy Year for the Catholic Church and celebrations of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which gave birth to the Nicene Creed, affirmed the full divinity of Christ and set a formula for determining the date of Easter, that is, the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. (CNS)
