PATRIARCH KIRILL DOUBTS LEGITIMACY OF PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW'S AUTHORITY
Interfax-Religiia, 16 September 2021
Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill posed the question whether an ecclesiastical authority who has acted in concelebration with schismatics may be considered to be legitimate.
"It is important to think through once again what church schism means, how local churches should react to it, whether it is permissible to enter into prayer and Eucharistic communion with schismatics, what kind of canonical consequences follow from such engagement, and whether ecclesiastical authority can be considered legitimate when it has violated the ecclesiastical order after concelebrating with schismatics and self-ordained persons who lack canonical ordination," he said on Thursday while opening in Moscow a theological conference devoted to the current situation in world Orthodoxy, which has arisen because of the meddling of Constantinople in church affairs of Ukraine.
After noting that church canons give completely exhaustive answers to all these questions, the patriarch urged theologians from various countries who are taking part in the forum to figure out how to apply these canons in practice and what this means specifically for the current situation.
In late 2018, Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, with the support of the then existing government of Ukraine, founded a new Ukrainian church (the PTsU) on the base of two uncanonical organizations and in defiance of protests by the Russian church, of which Ukraine is a canonical part. This led to a rupture in Eucharistic communion between the RPTs and Constantinople. For a long time, not one of the local Orthodox churches recognized the new church structure, with the exception of Constantinople itself. Subsequently, individual Greek churches and primates expressed support for the PTsU, with which the RPTs also had to sever relations because of this relationship.
Patriarch Kirill emphasized that in the face of the schism that has arisen within world Orthodoxy, the Russian Orthodox Church remains united and consolidated.
"Events occurring in Ukraine, provoked by the illegal intrusion of Constantinople into the canonical territory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UPTsMP), have helped many in our church to realize once again the gift of unity that we have inherited from our thousand-year history," the primate is convinced. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 September 2021)
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