Leo XIV Eliminates the Filioque with a Footnote

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Leo XIV Eliminates the Filioque with a Footnote

gloria.tv | November 23, 2025

Pope Leo XIV has issued a new Apostolic Letter titled In unitate fidei (“In the Unity of Faith”), calling Christians to renewed "dialogue" and "unity".

Released on Sunday to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the document contains the usual word salad about "shared foundations" of the Christian faith. Next Friday, Leo XIV and the controversial Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew will visit Nicaea, near today’s Iznik in Turkey.


Credo in pluralitatem Ecclesiarum

In the new letter, Leo XIV writes that Christian unity is not about “returning” to the past, but about “an ecumenism that looks to the future, that seeks reconciliation through dialogue.”

He even speaks - contrary to the Faith in the ONE Church founded by Christ - of a “current status quo of the diversity of Churches and ecclesial communities.”

Leo XIV continues: “We must therefore leave behind theological controversies that have lost their raison d’être in order to develop a common understanding and, even more, a common prayer to the Holy Spirit, so that he may gather us all together in one faith and one love.”


The Silent Disappearance of the Filioque

The Apostolic Letter presents the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as prayed by the schismatic Orthodox, omitting the Filioque: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”

The manipulative Footnote 10 says that “the statement ‘and proceeds from the Father and the Son (Filioque)’ is not found in the text of Constantinople; it was inserted into the Latin Creed by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014 and is a subject of Orthodox–Catholic dialogue.”


Necessary History Left out by the Footnote

Three synods of Toledo (400, 447, 589) approved the Creed stating that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” It was ordered to be sung in the liturgy, becoming standard in the Mozarabic rite. From there it spread into Gallican liturgy. In 809, Charlemagne convened a synod in Aachen, Germany where theologians—especially Theodulf of Orléans—defended the Filioque as an integral part of the Christian faith.

Rome had the same doctrine but did not pray the Creed during Mass at all. In 1014, Emperor Henry II came to Rome to be crowned and was surprised that no Creed was sung at Mass there. Therefore, Pope Benedict VIII introduced the Nicene Creed with the Filioque into the Roman liturgy.


The theology behind the Filioque

The Filioque remains the necessary and fitting expression of the inner relationship of the Holy Trinity: the Son receives the entire divine essence from the Father, including the Father’s eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit.

Christ indicated this in John 16, stating that the Spirit “will take from what is Mine.”

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Greek Catholic Uniates in Hungary Removed the Filioque in September

gloria.tv | November 24, 2025

Since 1 September 2025, the Greek Catholic Church in Hungary has omitted the 'Filioque' from the Creed during the Divine Liturgy.

This decision to abandon a Catholic tenet in order to appease the schismatic Orthodox was announced on Hd.gorogkatolikus.hu.

The article argues that, in recent decades, Pope John Paul II prayed with Orthodox patriarchs, omitting the 'Filioque'. It claims that this change is not an innovation, but a return to a text prayed by ancestors.

The current version states that the "Holy Spirit [...] proceeds from the Father", which can easily be misunderstood. According to the Western tradition, the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father and the Son". The Eastern fathers said, what is also legitimately formulated, that he proceeds "from the Father through the Son". However, the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father alone.