Primates support ecumenical moves over Easter | ACNS

Primates support ecumenical moves over Easter: [ACNS] The Primates of the Anglican Communion have agreed to support moves by the Coptic Pope to unify and fix the date of Easter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said last week at the end of the Primates Meeting in Canterbury Cathedral.

Currently, both eastern and western churches use the same formula for calculating the date of Easter: the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. But the eastern churches use the older Julian calendar while the western churches use the Gregorian calendar.

And while the eastern church bases its calculations on the actual, astronomical full moon and the actual equinox as observed along the meridian of Jerusalem; the western church applies a fixed date of 21 March for the vernal equinox and uses ecclesiastical tables of new moons rather than actual astronomical full moons; resulting in different dates in the east and west despite the common formula. (Mais ...)