MOSCOW DECLARES THAT QUESTION OF CHANGE OF CALENDAR AND PASCHALIA IS NOT ON R.P.Ts. AGENDA
In the days of Lent, a representative of the Constantinople patriarchate at the World Council of Churches, Archbishop Job of Telemissos, spoke out in favor of a change in the rules for calculating the date of Pascha [the Paschalia] so that the Orthodox would celebrate this feast at the same time as western Christians.
Commenting on this statement on a broadcast of the program "Church and World," the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow patriarchate, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Ilarion, noted that such suggestions have been discussed over the last several decades in various contexts, including within the framework of the World Council of Churches. "But here the question is very simple: who should change their Paschalia? We, for example, do not intend to change," Ilarion emphasized.
He said: "There are not any internal impulses that would proceed from our church people in favor of changing the church calendar. This pertains not only to the date of the celebration of Pascha but also the so-called transition to the new style. From time to time voices are raised in favor of our need to bring our church calendar into conformity with the secular calendar. Such an attempt even was made in the Russian church in the 20s of the last century when Patriarch Tikhon issued an order about the transition to the new style, and two weeks later he had to rescind this order, since the church folk did not accept it."
Thus Metropolitan Ilarion summed up: "The question about a change of the calendar is not on the agenda of the Orthodox church, and in any case it is not of the agenda of the Russian Orthodox Church." (tr. by PDS, posted 8 April 2021)
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