Bring Easter up to date.

ALEPPO, Syria--The celebration of Easter, the central solemn feast of the Christian faith, should be the event that brings together different Christian traditions. Yet for centuries churches in the East and West have celebrated Easter on different dates. Last year an ecumenical consultation organized by the World Council of Churches met to try to resolve this symbol of Christian division.

The problem has a long history. In an attempt to resolve conflicting practices and tie the celebration of Easter to the Sunday after Passover, the Council of Nicaea in 325 determined Easter to be the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.

This method worked fairly well until Pope Gregory XIII's introduction of the calendar that bears his name in October 1582. Acceptance of the Gregorian calendar grew gradually in Europe, but Eastern Orthodox churches never accepted it as the basis of their liturgical year--last rejecting it in 1971--and maintained the ancient Julian calendar. So, even with the same formula, two calendars will usually produce different days. In addition, modern astronomy has found errors in the Gregorian calendar that produce slight inaccuracies in setting dates.

To address these problems, the Aleppo consultation affirmed the wisdom of Nicaea's original principle but realized the need for more exact astronomical calculations. The agreement suggests 2001 as the start date for a unified Easter date.

Both the Vatican and Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew endorse the efforts for a new common Easter date. The latter's support is especially crucial because the Eastern churches will have to make greater changes to their liturgical calendar than in the West.