Pope John Paul and the symbolic leader of the world's Orthodox Christians made a joint commitment today to work for "real dialogue" with Islam and combat terrorism together.
The Pope and Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, based in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul, signed a joint declaration on a range of issues at the end of Bartholomew's official visit to the Vatican.
During the visit, Bartholomew's first to the Vatican in nine years, the two leaders made a number of appeals for unity of the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity that split in the Great Schism of 1054.
Among the joint goals in their declaration was to "build a real dialogue with Islam because indifference and reciprocal ignorance can only spawn diffidence and even hate".
The two sides also committed themselves to "healing the plague of terrorism with love".
Since his election in 1978, the Pope has made reconciliation with the Orthodox Christians a priority of his reign.
During a visit to Athens in 2001, he asked God to forgive Roman Catholics for 1,000 years of sins against Orthodox Christians.
He has also apologised to Muslims for the Crusades, which aimed to win the Holy Land back from them, and to Jews for centuries of anti-Semitism.