PATRIARCH KIRILL UPSET BY CONDUCT OF REPRESENTATIVES OF CONSTANTINOPLE PATRIARCHATE IN UKRAINE
Interfax-Religiia, 13 October 2015
The Russian Orthodox Church is profoundly concerned by the "anticanonical actions" of hierarchs of the Ukrainian church structures of the Constantinople patriarchate in the USA and Canada, the website of the Department of External Church Relations (OVTsS) of the Moscow patriarchate reports.
This concern was expressed upon the authorization of Patriarch Kirill by the head of the delegation of the Russian church to the Fifth Pan-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference in Chambesy, near Geneva, the chairman of OVTsS, Metropolitan Ilarion.
He explained that said bishops arrived in Ukraine, supposedly in the name of the Constantinople patriarch, without informing the canonical primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church about this. They established contacts with schismatics; they declare that there supposedly exists a readiness on the part of the Constantinople patriarchate to grant autocephaly to the schismatics; they call into question generally accepted canonical acts of the Constantinople patriarchate of past centuries; and they receive with honor persons who have been unfrocked and excommunicated from the church, permitting them to perform "divine services" in their churches, and they participate in worship with them.
"We ask the Constantinople patriarchate to give an assessment of these anticanonical acts and to require these hierarchs to cease such actions that are disrupting our pan-Orthodox unity," Metropolitan Ilarion declared.
The head of the delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church expressed hope that despite the current difficulties, participants in the conference will be able "in the spirit of fraternal unanimity and cooperation" to prepare the Pan-Orthodox Council, which should be a factor for strengthening church unity in a time when Orthodoxy "especially needs" this. (tr. by PDS, posted 13 October 2015)
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