Christianity’s two most important leaders, still officially divided by a thousand-year schism, will be speaking with an increasingly unified voice that has gone beyond the realm of religion to confronting pressing issues such as climate change and humanitarian crises around the globe.

The visit, which comes on the heels of Francis’ historic meeting with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is evidence of an increasingly important Catholic-Orthodox partnership that has been strengthened by shared concern for Christians being exterminated by Islamic extremists in the lands of Jesus’ birth.

Francis has called these indiscriminate attacks on Christians – Catholic, Orthodox and others – an “ecumenism of blood,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if he uses the term again on Lesbos when he meets with refugees fleeing Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

“The ecumenical patriarch and popes for the last generation have increasingly begun to speak together on issues of common concern,” said George Demacopoulos, chair of Orthodox Christian studies at the Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York. “What you have here is a more specific case: You have the uniqueness of Pope Francis and the ecumenical patriarch at a tipping point in historical and European events.”

According to the Greek organizers, Francis and Bartholomew will visit with new arrivals at Lesbos’ Moria refugee registration center, which has essentially been turned into a detention center for refugees slated for deportation under the controversial EU-Turkey plan, which calls for new arrivals in Greece to be returned to Turkey.

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