The Great Schism refers to a conflictive religious event that occurred in the year 1054. In this conflict there was a mutual rupture and excommunication between the highest leader of the Catholic Church in Rome, the Pope or Bishop of Rome (together with the Christianity of the West), and the ecclesiastical hierarchies of the Orthodox Church (together with the Christianity of the East) especially the principal one of them, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Its direct antecedent is known as Schism of Photius.
