On Sunday, May 25. 2014, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Francis will meet at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to commemorate a meeting in the Holy Land fifty years ago by their revered predecessors, Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI.

This pilgrimage commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the meeting between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in 1964. That blessed encounter captured the attention of the Christian world. As the first meeting between a Pope and an Ecumenical Patriarch since 1438, it marked a dramatic turn for the churches from alienation to engagement.