Adoption
Although Gregory's reform was enacted in the most solemn of forms available to the Church, the bull had no authority beyond the Catholic Church and the Papal States. The changes that he was proposing were changes to the civil calendar, over which he had no authority. They required adoption by the civil authorities in each country to have legal effect.
The Nicene Council of 325 specified that all Christians should celebrate Easter on the same day. It took almost five centuries before virtually all Christians achieved that objective by adopting the rules of the Church of Alexandria (see Easter for the issues which arose). The bull Inter gravissimas became the law of the Catholic Church in 1582, but it was not recognised by Protestant Churches, Orthodox Churches, and a few others. Consequently, the days on which Easter and related holidays were celebrated by different Christian Churches again diverged.
Today, a vast majority of countries use the Gregorian calendar as their sole civil calendar. Countries which haven't adopted the Gregorian calendar are Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Nepal, Iran and Afghanistan. Some countries use other calendars alongside the Gregorian calendar: India, Bangladesh, Israel and Myanmar; other countries use a modified version of the Gregorian calendar: Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, North Korea and Taiwan.
The nearly universal civil adoption of the Gregorian calendar hasn't been followed by most religious organizations, which have often retained their own calendars. These alternate calendars are used in many regions of the world today to mark cycles of religious and astrological events.
Read more about this topic: Gregorian Calendar, History
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