# Can Rome and the East heal the Great Schism?

**By:** David P Deavel  
**Published:** 2026-08-01T18:00:00.000Z  
**Source:** [The Catholic Herald](https://thecatholicherald.com/article/can-rome-and-the-east-heal-the-great-schism)

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Dmitri Solzhenitsyn offers a historically informed and cautiously hopeful account of the obstacles to reunion between Catholics and Orthodox

Reuniting Rome with the Orthodox: How the Great Schism Unfolded – and Might Yet Be Healed by Dmitri Solzhenitsyn (272 pages, Creed & Culture, $29)
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Twentieth-century Orthodox theologian Fr Alexander Schmemann used to say that a requirement for reconciliation with Catholics was a pan-Orthodox synod. That, he added wryly, was “an eschatological concept”. After Schmemann’s death, however, the Orthodox attempted a pan-Orthodox synod in 2016. Admittedly, that event did not succeed in bringing all the particular Orthodox Churches together. The most notable abstainers were the Antiochians and Russians. The event was, nonetheless, a start.