Conference Press Releases

IOTA Private Audience with Pope Leo XIV, 7 June 2025

The IOTA conference “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity” culminated Saturday with a private audience in the Vatican with His Holiness Pope Leo XIV. IOTA President Paul Gavrilyuk and Board Members were welcomed by the Pontiff in the Vatican’s Sala Clementina and joyfully presented him with gifts of IOTA memorabilia. In a warm personal address many found spiritually moving, Pope Leo greeted the delegation as brothers and sisters on the eve of Pentecost, urging all to “remember that the unity for which Christians long will not be primarily the fruit of our own efforts, nor will it be realized through any preconceived model or blueprint. Rather, unity will be a gift received ‘as Christ wills and by the means that he wills’ (Prayer for Unity of Father Paul Couturier), by the working of the Holy Spirit.”

As the conference concluded, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant attendees expressed joy over the spirit of dialogue, scholarship, and genuine learning on all sides. Rev. Prof. Hyacinthe Destivelle, O.P. Director of the Institute for Ecumenical Studies and Rev. Prof. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Rector Magnificus, both of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, congratulated IOTA on the great success of the conference and invited future collaboration with IOTA. President Paul Gavrilyuk agreed that “This conference has established IOTA as a major platform for academic ecumenical dialogue.”

As a next step, IOTA proposed to develop a joint declaration on deification in cooperation with the Angelicum. Plans are also underway to form an IOTA working group that will address the reception of the main documents and achievements of ecumenical discussions, especially the bilateral Orthodox-Catholic dialogues. In the wake of the meeting’s energy and good will, attendees expressed great enthusiasm for the January 2027 IOTA Mega-Conference in Poti, Georgia.

The conference’s diverse presentations emphasized in harmony that the Council of Nicaea is not a museum artifact to memorialize but a living proclamation reverberating across the centuries with the good news of divine-human communion in Jesus Christ, which we must dynamically continue to plumb and rearticulate today.

“Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium” was convened by the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA) and co-organized by the Institute for Ecumenical Studies of the Angelicum. Over the course of four days, roughly 300 attendees and hierarchs listened as over 100 Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant scholars presented papers on the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the promise it holds for Christian unity today.

Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium
Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity

Today marks the opening of “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity,” a conference convened by the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA) and co-organized by the Institute for Ecumenical Studies of the Angelicum. In Rome, over the course of four days, roughly 300 attendees, including hierarchs of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, will hear over 100 Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant scholars present papers on the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the promise it holds for Christian unity today. During the conference the Nicene faith will be proclaimed in song by choirs from the Dominican, Coptic, Romanian, and Ukrainian traditions. The event will culminate with a private audience with His Holiness Pope Leo XIV.

Convened by Emperor Constantine in AD 325, the Council of Nicaea was the first universal (“ecumenical”) Christian council, inaugurating a synodal way of addressing issues facing the church worldwide. The Nicene Creed articulated the theology of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ which continues to guide the common faith of Christians, particularly in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium” focuses on understanding and expressing this common faith in today’s world with a view towards moving the two churches closer to full communion.

At the Opening Session (Wednesday, 4 June), an illustrious panel welcomed participants from across the globe with a robust slate of thought-provoking addresses. After an opening prayer service, Rev. Prof. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Rector Magnificus, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome) welcomed conference participants and introduced Prof. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, the founding President of IOTA and Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul MN, USA. Prof. Gavrilyuk situated the conference within IOTA’s mission of promoting synergy between the academy and the Church, putting Christ “at the center of our scholarly work” and lives. Whether and how Nicaea can make a difference in church unity today, he said, is the conference’s central question.

Gavrilyuk’s remarks were followed by three keynote lectures: Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, reminded participants that “the heart of Christian ecumenism lies in the common conversion of all Christians and churches to Jesus Christ” and that “revitalising the confession of Jesus Christ” expressed in the Nicene Creed — “learning once more to see him in all his greatness and beauty” — is “an urgent task of our time” which “must be undertaken in ecumenical fellowship.”

Metropolitan Job (Getcha) of Pisidia (Ecumenical Patriarchate) called the Nicene Creed “a confession of faith that transcends the limits of time and space” and which is foundational for restoring Catholic-Orthodox unity. He summarized the progress towards unity made in recent years — including Roman Catholic reconsideration of the filioque and of Roman primacy — as well as barriers that remain, such as contemporary Orthodox misunderstanding of the Nicene calculation of Pascha and forgetfulness of their long history of accepting Roman Catholic baptism.

Lord Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury (2003-2012) and Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge (2013-2020), expressed the significance of Nicene Trinitarian theology for our understanding of the nature of God and of love. Christ’s Incarnation reveals “God’s own life, which is eternally a life of self-sharing or self-bestowing,” both in the “new creation” of each believer and in the Body of Christ, the Church. This is why “the Church’s unity and communion” must be grounded “in the vision of eternal divine generativity that Nicaea proposes and defends.”

The conference is made possible by the patronage of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and by the support of private benefactors and foundations, educational institutions, and ten prominent ecumenical organizations. The full conference program is available on the IOTA website, and plenary sessions will be livestreamed.