Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Communion, has invited Pope Francis to travel with him to the Holy Land next year to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic embrace between Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI in 1964.
The meeting of Athenagoras and Paul VI in Jerusalem led to the rescinding of the excommunications of 1054 which formalised the Great Schism between the churches of East and West.
Bartholomew I also invited Pope Francis to Constantinople for the feast day of St Andrew on November 30.